Macro shots of plants at Cotopaxi

You probably are all sick of our macro shots of plants - we just really like getting close and capturing the details. If you're not sick of it yet, check out our other macro picture blog posts: at the Quito Botanical Gardens, in Salinas, and while we were still in Germany. 

The area around Cotopaxi is really interesting. It's called a paramo or tundra region. Around the waterfall area, the plants were so lush and full. In the plains and valley, it was mostly grassland with a few trees. And this was all within a kilometer of each other.

Lush jungle-like feel

Grass is the first thing to pop up after a wildfire.
Quito and the Andean part of Ecuador had a lot of wildfires in the summer because it was so dry.

Another picture of a plant hit by the wildfires.
It was mostly charred branches with new leaves coming out.
It was a great example of how life rejuvenates itself after a major disaster like a fire.

I really just wanted to have a picture of how HUGE this pinecone was. 

I just liked these orange flowers and their spiky leaves.

Quito's Beautiful Botanical Gardens

Wow, has it been a long time since we posted or what?! Anyway, I'm here now and have a little time to write and schedule some posts to go out while when we're in the US on vacation.


There was a long weekend in May in which we didn't go out of town so we got to see parts of Quito that we hadn't visited yet. One was the Botanical Gardens with friends of ours.

It was one of those places that I hope we can get back to next year because it really is a beautiful, peaceful place. They have an amazing collection of orchids and exotic flowers so we had a very good time. Here are some pics that Greg and I took (lots of our favorite, macro photos!):

Gladiolas on a Sunday

Last Sunday, Greg and I had planned on picking raspberries with the slim hope that it was still raspberry season here. It wasn't. We couldn't even find the field - that's how wrong we were! It was so typical that when we finally got around to doing something, it was over. The locals seem to all follow a sort of timetable for this sort of stuff that I just haven't acclimated to yet, I guess.

Anyway, we didn't pick raspberries, but we did come across one of the many lovely bluemen fields that they have here - basically, you pick your own flowers fresh out of the field.

It's all on an honor system and unlike in the US, where people might try to cheat the system, here they actually pay the correct amount for the flowers! And they trust them to bring back the little knives used to cut the flowers, too!! They almost had an overflow of little flower knives, that's how straight-laced everyone is here. It's unreal sometimes.

Our flowers that we picked