Kilka chwil z zycia Alicji i Jacka

A view from the highest building in Quito. We were able to climb there only thanks to Susana's father.

Cotopaxi is the world's highest continuously active volcano (5,897 m). We managed to climb up to 4,800 m and then we had enough - definitively not enough oxygen ...

The yellow line in between our feet is the equator, the touristic one not necessary the geographic one... but anyways.. as you can see we both have one foot on one hemisphere and second on the other, how cool is that?!!!!

I think the place was called El Mindo...a small piece of rainforest where the butterflies were bred and then released to the wild. Some of them though stayed them and tourist could feed them with very ripe bananas. On the picture you can see my hand with one butterfly and Susana's hand with another one. I will let you guess which hand belongs to whom :)

On the way back from El Mindo we stopped in a small indian village. We are not sure what kind of celebration that was, but there were lots of people dressed up in their national clothes, dancing in the street, selling traditional food and really enjoying themselves. No matter what they celebrated it was really exciting to be a part of it

Unfortunately Ecuador is a relatively poor country and a lot of people live in unimaginable poverty, the view of hungry and dirty children is quite common, the animals especially outside of big cities are starved, often abused, but in a way some are maybe happier than their counterparts in the Western world where animals are kept closed in "animal factories"... who knows....

Even high in the mountains (3 500 m above the sea level) every piece of land is used for agriculture purposes what unfortunately does not prevent extreme poverty of people who live there

The number of homeless dogs in Ecaudor is frightening, anywhere you turn you will see a couple of often sick, hungry dogs. Surprisingly enough we saw only one cat during our two week trip.
On the picture- dogs at one of the Indian markets

This dog in any western country would be considered a case of animal cruelty, so skinny...unfortunately the population of homeless dogs in Ecuador does not seem to be controlled in any other way than by starvation and deseases...

High in the mountains, in old vulcanos craters rainn created beautiful lakes with wonderfully clean water in amazing blue color...
On the picture one of the lakes we saw

One of the biggest tourists attraction in Ecuador - 7h trip around the country on the roof of a train. We got up at 5 in the morning to get good "seats", really crazy... but in the end I think it was worth the pain and suffering (Jacek disagrees with me on that one)... we are on this picture, I challenge anyone to find us :)

One of the attractions of taking this train was a beautiful view of the mountains... low below your feet, pretty scary, hugh?

The ecuadorian Indians are always dressed in a traditional way. For a man that would include a hat and a poncho as it can be seen on this picture

As it can be seen on this picture woman's life is not easy in Ecuador especialy in a countryside. They always carry something on their backs (children, animals or big loads of other stuff), in addition to that they do a lot of physical work around the house, farm and in the field...