Home » Peru Ecuador Chile » 2000 Travel Diary (Part 1)

I saw in the New Millennium in Vilcabamba, a small town in the south of Ecuador. New Years celebrations began quite civilized with a bottle of Chilean champagne on the balcony of our hotel. We spent a few hours with some friends listening to the New Millennium being welcomed in across the world on short wave radio. We waited for news of the Y2K bug triggering the predicted end of the world, but all seemed pretty calm so we cracked open another bottle of wine and then went down into the town. In the town we found a cute little street party complete with disco ball and danced our way into the New Millennium. Everything seemed to be going very smoothly until the excessive alcohol levels in my blood triggered a major Y2K failure in my brain. Apparently I had a great time in the first few hours of the New Year and was very entertaining to my friends and locals alike! (Pictures by request!)

2000 Travel Diary (Part 1)

Gjcmcclurg
2005-12-23 15:00:51

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I saw in the New Millennium in Vilcabamba, a small town in the south of Ecuador. New Years celebrations began quite civilized with a bottle of Chilean champagne on the balcony of our hotel. We spent a few hours with some friends listening to the New Millennium being welcomed in across the world on short wave radio. We waited for news of the Y2K bug triggering the predicted end of the world, but all seemed pretty calm so we cracked open another bottle of wine and then went down into the town. In the town we found a cute little street party complete with disco ball and danced our way into the New Millennium. Everything seemed to be going very smoothly until the excessive alcohol levels in my blood triggered a major Y2K failure in my brain. Apparently I had a great time in the first few hours of the New Year and was very entertaining to my friends and locals alike! (Pictures by request!)

Next we traveled up through Cuenca to Latacunga where we did a 'challenging' hike around Laguna Quilotoa. We began the hike around the magnificent volcanic crater lake at 08.00 in the morning. The trail followed the ridge of the crater, but quickly became undefined and we soon were scrambling across almost vertical cliff faces, desperately trying to pick out the way. After 3 hours of tough hiking/climbing at around 4,000m in the hot equatorial sun we decided that the next half of the crater looked too treacherous. We spotted a small dirt road below and so made our way down to it, hoping to find transport back to civilization! We arrived at the road exhausted, water less, food less and hat less, only to be told that the nearest village was a 4 hour walk away! Dragging our feet under the burning sun we began our stumble towards the next village, armed with rocks to fend off the rabid local dogs. After a few hours Paula started to loose it and murmur that she wasn't going to make it! (It was just like the 17 km desert death hike in Mali that ...

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