Conclusion...?

Hi everyone,

I realized I sort of left anyone who was reading my blog hanging when I got back to the U.S. (safely!). I have been busy busy busy, and I'm loving it. Here's a little summary of what I've been up to since my last post:

After hiking the Inca Trail we arrived at Machu Picchu (!!!!!) and it was just as amazing as I had expected and more. In the morning (6/6:30 am) we had to race across the ruins to get tickets so that we could climb Wayna Picchu, the mountain that you see in the background of any postcard picture of Machu Picchu. They only let 400 people in each day, and we got number 345 and 346! So we had an amazing time there, and then got on a train back to Cuzco, but only after waiting for a few hours, wondering if the train would actually come because of a strike on the railroad. That was scaryy because we didn't know if we would make it to our International flight home from Lima in time, because the strike was also affecting the roads around Cuzco, so we couldnt get out on a bus from Cuzco to Lima!

But it ended up working out fine, our bus just left a little late because the strike was only going on during the day the next day, so we went on another 24 hour bus ride to get back to Lima. We flew out on May 29th, and had to RUN to our planes in Miami (Sam was going straight to Chicago, I had to go to St. Louis and then to Chicago), but we made it.

So just 2 days after I got back, on Monday June 1st, I started my summer internship at ACCION Chicago. It's a micro-lending Non-profit organization, and we give out small business loans to clients in the Chicagoland area. About 25% of our clients are Spanish-speaking, so I've been able to use my Spanish a decent amount (I would say 2-3 times/week), especially recently. I do lots of things and keep very busy at my job, uploading documents, making phone calls, drafting letters, visiting client business locations, as well as promoting ACCION at many different events. One of my favorite events so far was one for Latina Style magazine, which was held at the Macy's on State Street. We had a booth there to give information to women who had their own business or were starting one, and either the vast majority of them or all of them were Spanish-speaking.

Well, I'm having lots of fun at my job, but that also means I don't have too much time to update the blog, and 'Carolina en Ecuador' doesn't really apply anymore... So I'm planning on starting a new blog in the Fall when I'm done working at ACCION and I start my senior year at U of I. I'll be volunteering (don't know where yet... so many options!) and working at the Study Abroad Office as a Peer Advisor (Yay!!! just found out I got the job) as well as the normal college "going to classes" thing.

Thanks for reading and I'll be back later!

Inca Trail -Salkantay

We're alive! We just finished 2 and a half days of hardcore hiking, and now we're in Aguas Calientes, the town just outside of Machu Picchu!!!! We're going up to the ruins at 5:30 tomorrow morning :)

So our hike was basically amazing. Our group was just 5 girls: 3 girls from New York, and Sam and I, and our guide Henry. The first day we got up at 4 am and caught a bus around 5 to go to a town about 3 hours away. We arrived in Mollepata (molle=tree, pata= high place... I'm learning all the Quechua I can!) and had breakfast, then we started our hike! There were a lot of flat parts on dirt road, but also a decent amount of uphill parts that were somewhat tough. We stopped and had a nice lunch with soup and chicken and rice, and all the tea we could ever want (with coca leaves! oh snap). We kept hiking all the way to our camp, at the bottom of a glacier on a biiig mountain! It was so pretty :) But that night was pretty cold...

The next morning we had to hike very very uphill to a mountain pass between 2 glaciers. It was hard, and we just kept taking about 3 or 4 (very slow) steps and then stopping to rest/breathe. We finally got to the top of the mountain pass, had a snack, and then started our descent into an ever-changing climate. We had lunch while it was raining, and put our ponchos on preparing for the worst, but it just kept getting nicer out, and it stopped raining about a minute after we left from lunch. We started to get into the jungle... and I saw some amazing flowers (lots of WWPD pictures, Zack) and the river below us. We got to our camp and played some cards, then we got some rest in a much warmer climate, which was nice :)

The next morning (today, actually) we woke up and started our last uphill/mostly downhill hike through the jungle. In the morning it was cold, but it got much warmer within a few hours. There were lots of waterfalls along the way, and whenever we stopped our legs hurt a little, but the hike was just perfect. It was a lot of flat walking and some uphill and downhill, and especially a perfect temperature in the shade. We finally arrived at a small town (the end!) for lunch, and then took a van to a train station.

We got on the train to go to Aguas Calientes, the town right outside of Machu Picchu. It was really stuffy, so I did a little exploring and found a spot by an open window and a place if i wanted to sit down. I met some women from Colombia and guys from Switzerland and Amsterdam. The European guys spoke English (and probably some other language, just not spanish) and the Colombians spoke pretty good English and obviously Spanish, but I did a little translating when they were talking and wondering what a word was in English, heh.

So now we're here in Aguas Calientes and we're waking up eaaaarrrrly and going to MACHU PICCHU!!!!! I just can't wait :)

Chaos!

Cuzco!

So we made it!

After staying in Puno for about a day, and going to some sweet floating islands on Lake Titicaca (thanks workers strike!), we took a bus to Cuzco. On the bus we watched some Bride Wars, Seven Pounds (P.S. the title makes way more sense in Spanish - Siete Almas, or seven souls), and a hilarious made for t.v. movie called Her Best Move (featuring Luke from Gilmore Girls and Miranda from Lizzie McGuire). After the movies were over we had about 2 hours more of bus ride that was scary because we had seats right in the front, so we could see out the window when our bus had to swerve around rocks in the road. The rocks were put there by the people who were striking (actually agricultural workers, not miners, my mistake) to block transportation... apparently stopping work isn't enough to make an impact, which sucks :( But we got to Cuzco safely and found a hostel right around the corner from the one Dekel (I spelled his name wrong before, this one's right) met his other Israeli friend at.

Yesterday we went to a small town outside of Cuzco called Pisac, which was definitely worth the trip. It had a huge market where I got a few things (some gloves for our hike!) and a ton of Incan ruins up on the hill/mountain above the town. We got a taxi up and walked around with some friends I had met in Lima from Canada, and we had been emailing to try to find each other. We hiked back down to the town and then took the bus home, and had a great dinner at a restaurant right across from our hostel. I was stupid and didn't have enough money with me for dinner, so Sam paid with a combination of dollars and soles, which worked out okay, because they pretty much take dollars everywhere around Peru.

So today we're going to some museums and probably a few more incan ruin sites, and then we leave for our hike to Machu Picchu via Salkantay tomorrow morning at 4:30 am! We do take a bus for a little while, and don't start hiking until 8 am. I bought some good hiking boots today that are real comfy and weren't too expensive. I'm so excited to see Machu Picchu!!!!!

Chao for now :)

At the moment...

We're staying the night in Puno, next to Lago Titicaca. We met a really cool guy from Israel, Dakel (i think that's how you spell it?) on the 24 hour bus ride, and we're all staying in a hotel and going on a short tour to the 'Floating Islands' tomorrow. Our bus company said the strike will be over tomorrow, so we're getting on a bus with them at 4pm to get to Cuzco.

EXTREME DETOUR! But we're making the best of it :)

Carolina en Peruuuuuu!

I’m in Peru! Actually, I have been for a while, I’m just very slow at updating the blog… But I left Quito after my last day of volunteering and my last day at school (I had to take an ‘extra credit’ final online for marketing) on and overnight bus to Guayaquil where I would meet my friends Jen and Steph, who were flying there in the morning. We met at the bus terminal and then had to go outside to another office to get our bus tickets to Lima… a 26 hour trip! We thought the bus would leave at 2pm, which gave us a good few hours to eat lunch and hang around the bus terminal, but it turned out Lonely Planet was wrong, and the bus actually left at 11:30 am. So we had to rush over and we got on the bus just in time.

The bus was actually surprisingly nice, the seats turned into semi-beds, with a footrest type thing. It was 2 floors, and the bus actually didn’t fill up at all, so we were each able to have a seat to ourselves. They gave us hot meals on the bus, and it ended up taking 30 hours in total, but it was pretty interesting to ride through the desert in northern Peru and see the coast occasionally.

We got to Lima and shared a taxi with some nice foreigners to Miraflores, a really nice neighborhood in Lima. We picked a hostel in LP called the Flying Dog, and arranged our things and then went to the internet café and wandering around. There was a big park right outside the hostel, and it had a little nighttime market in the middle. There was also Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Pizza Hut… but we wanted some Peruvian food, so we came back to a restaurant right next to the hostel where there were some guys from Virginia who we had met in the hostel. Steph actually ate some goat, and we tried pisco, the liquor from Peru, and then we tried chicha, thinking it was ‘fermented corn beer’ and therefore alcoholic, but it turned out that there are 2 kinds of chicha, and we were drinking the non-alcoholic one, which was pretty funny.

We had a good night’s sleep in the hostel, and Steph and Jen caught a flight to Cuzco early in the morning, leaving me for a day until Sam arrived at the airport that night from Chicago. I spent the day relaxing and talking to a lot of awesome people in the hostel, from places like Israel, France, England, and Canada. I went out to get coffee (Starbucks Caramel Frappuchino!) with a girl from Florida, who had finished school and was working on some archaeological digs around Peru. We talked for a while about that because I had just finished my class on Andean Archaeology that covered some of the stuff she was working on.

I also took a walk to the coast, which was a little hazy, but pretty looking. I didn’t go down to the beach, but just went to a lookout over some cliffs that looked out on the ocean.

Later that evening, I went to pick up Sam at the airport, and there were tons of teenagers waiting around and screaming occasionally when certain doors opened, because apparently the JONAS BROTHERS were coming on a flight right around the same time. OMG! haha. I wanted to stay for a little and see what sort of madness ensued, but when Sam got there we just headed back to the hostel. We dropped her stuff off and went out to get food. There wasn’t actually much open because it was Sunday, but we walked down a road with a bunch of restaurants where everyone was pleading us to go in. We walked right past that, feeling a little annoyed, and decided we shouldn’t go to McDonald’s because that would be “too American”… so we went to Burger King instead! hah. Back at the hostel we listened to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me before going to sleep, planning on wandering around downtown Lima the next day.

Monday (May 18th) we got up and had breakfast with some women from Israel, and a guy from San Diego, and then we took a taxi to go find out about buses to Cuzco, that we wanted to get on that night so we could arrive late Tuesday in Cuzco (another long bus ride... at least 22 hours). The bus company only left for Cuzco at 4:00 pm, so that didn’t give us much time to see Lima before we had to leave. Also, at first I thought the bus was terribly expensive, because when I asked them how much it cost they said ‘160’. I assumed she meant dollars, as I had just been reading Lonely Planet where everything was in dollars, but she obviously meant the Peruvian currency, soles, which equates to about $50 (3 soles to 1 dollar). So, after realizing I was a silly gringa, we bought tickets and then went to see the Plazas and churches in the centro.

We ate lunch at a nice little restaurant, and I made Sam try yuca frita and choclo con queso. After seeing the sights we then rushed back in a taxi, grabbed our stuff (I left my big maleta in a closet in the hostel! thank god I don’t have to lug that thing around) and got to the bus station. Now I’m writing this post on my laptop on our bus ride to Cuzco! But we just found out that there’s a mining strike on the road to Cuzco… but there might be another way to get through. So we’re actually on our way to Puno (by lake Titicaca! hm, didn’t expect to be going there… but I guess we’re making a stop) and the bus company is organizing a car for us to either make it to Cuzco tonight or tomorrow morning. We still have 3 days before we have to be in Cuzco to leave for our hike to Machu Picchu, so it actually isn’t a horrifying set-back. Thanks Peru! Oh… interesting travel experiences.

Playa! (Freedom, reading – NOT for school, and spending time con mis amigos)

Once finals were over, and after mother’s day (which I spent with my host family out in the ‘campo’ having a picnic and going swimming) I went to meet Zack and Elizabeth at the beach! We were staying in Puerto Lopez again at the same hostel, and we met our friend Galo who works there. The first day at the beach we went to Los Frailes and hiked around to the beautiful beaches. The water was much lower than it had been when we were there before, so the waves weren’t as big, and we were able to walk to some caves that had been half underwater before. We also (mostly Elizabeth and Zack) built a sand castle, which was washed away right after we had taken a picture of it. We had an awesome dinner at Bellitalia like we had the last time, along with Galo and a friend of his (Joanna, I think).

The next day, we went to a small town south of Puerto Lopez called Las Tunas, which had a huuuuge beach that we played Frisbee on and went swimming for a little while. As we were getting off the bus we had met a group of Canadians who were building a retaining wall on the other side of town as part of a community development class. We went with one of them, who was an older student in her 40s or 50s, to her host family, which was very welcoming, and the host mom offered to make us batidos (smoothies) yumm. We spent a good amount of time just sitting in the shade talking with the woman, who had actually lost her eyesight about 3 years prior, and then later talking to some of the other volunteers who were more around our age. We went back to Puerto Lopez, and I was planning on going to another beach (Canoa) to meet other friends, but Galo had told me that it was really difficult to get there overnight, so I ended up just going home with Zack & Elizabeth to Quito.

It was a perfect, very relaxing way to spend my time after being done with finals :)

Finals

After the Quilotoa weekend, I had a full week of pure insanity, academic-wise. I had a monografía (research paper) for sociology due that Tuesday, then a final quiz on Wednesday in Andean Anthropology (which didn’t turn out to be that bad, partner quiz! love you Angelica Ordoñez…), which I had to study a lot for because for me it would count for double since I missed the last quiz for the funeral. Then Thursday I had 2 finals, Lit (Cuento Hispanoamericano) and Soc (Problemas Sociales en Ecuador), and Friday another monografía (8 pages, 1.5 space… ewww) for Anthropology.

But then, at about noon on Friday after I had turned in my paper… I was freeee! I am now ¾ of the way through college…. WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE?! I have one year left of school… oh goodness.

Quilotoa Bike Trip!

I'm going to go baaack in tiiiime... before finals were over... and tell y'all about my awesome bike trip May 1st through 3rd (Friday, Saturday, Sunday):

My friend Steph took the liberty of looking up some trips online to go to Quilotoa, a big volcano crater-lake not too far outside Quito (about 3 hours). She found a great 3-day bike trip, and so 5 of us from the program went together: Me, Steph, Eva, Pierce, and Zack.

We left Friday morning and were picked up by our awesome tour guide, Lincoln, in a jeep with our bikes on the roof. I got picked up in Cumbayá, but apparently in Lumbisí while he was waiting for half the group, some Lumbiseño (gente from Lumbisí?) asked if he was stealing those bikes… He said no, he was waiting for some people, and why would he put the bikes on top of the roof if he were stealing them? It sounded like a strange story, but Lumbisí is just such a close-knit community that a strange guy with bikes is very out of place.

Anyways, we had a nice ride in the car to the first part of our trip, Cotopaxi! We drove in through the National Park up to the volcano (farthest away from the center of the earth thank-you-very-much) and half-wayish up to the parking lot. We climbed from there up to the refugio, which was quite a hike… mainly because it was super steep and there was very little oxygen for me to breathe…but we made it, and then trudged back down through the volcanic ash that had been really hard to climb up through.

When we got back down to the parking lot, we put our knee pads, elbow pads, helmets, and biking gloves on, and prepared to bike down the volcano (!). We took a few pictures of us in our hardcore outfits, and then went gliiiding down on the dirt road. I decided later that this was my favorite part of the trip, but not by much, because there were so many other amazing parts too. We went back and forth a bunch of times until we got to the bottom, and then we biked through the national park all the way to a restaurant where we stopped and had a picnic lunch while it was raining of awesome sandwiches, with the only ají I’ve ever liked in Ecuador (I’m not big on the spicy stuff). Luckily it stopped raining and we kept biking all the way to a river just before the entrance to the park. Lincoln had followed us in the car the whole way with our stuff, so we packed up our bikes and drove to Quilotoa that night.

We got to our hostel and had a nice big family-style dinner with everyone else staying there. We had some tea and made a fire in our room, and we listened to music and hung out for a while before going to bed.

The next morning, we got up and went to the Quilotoa crater. You walk through a little cavern in the side of the crater, and all of a sudden you come out and see the huge lake and mountains around it. It was sooo beautiful. We climbed down to the lake, and Pierce, being Pierce, went right ahead and jumped in the cooold lake. When we saw him shivering as he rushed to get out, we all decided against it, but we did go kayaking around the lake (trying to avoid the loch ness monster that popped up occasionally…)

The hike down was really, really steep… and so I wasn’t about to hike back up it when we still had a whole day of biking ahead of us, and we had heard many suggestions that we should take horses/mules back up the crater. So Eva and I shelled out the $5, me for a horse and her for a mule, and we rode back up while Zack, Pierce, and Steph hiked up. They ended up beating us (they got a head start… we had to wait for the aminals to come), but I was really glad I did it, my first horse ride since I was 8 or so! And I only sneezed 7 times, and then took a Zyrtec from Pierce when we got back up.

Then we started our bike ride to the next town on the loop (about 2-and-a-half hours away). This was only about 60% downhill, as opposed to the previous day, which was probably 90% downhill. In the beginning, we all went up a hill and thought that Steph was behind us, but it turns out she had gone the wrong way and Lincoln had to drive back and find her.

We were warned about dogs that might attack us on this stretch of the trip, so Zack went prepared with a stick in his belt loop. Lincoln also told us a strategy to either, if you’re going downhill, just keep going because the dogs are just protecting their territory, so they probably will just bark at you as you pass by, or, if you’re going uphill and can’t go fast, you should get off your bike on the opposite side of the dog and use the bike to protect yourself. Luckily, I didn’t have any run-ins with dogs that day, but Eva had a pretty traumatizing time when 3 dogs tried to attack her. I came up behind her just after she had escaped them. Thankfully they didn’t bite or anything, but it seemed like it was a scary experience.

We got to the next town, Chugchilán, and took our stuff into the very nice hostel right before it started raining a lot. We took some nice hot showers, and after a while we found another group from USFQ (mostly gringos, some friends of ours and a few people we didn’t know) that was staying at the same place, and we all hung out (some, literally so, in the hammocks) for a while listening to music and talking, and then we had dinner (with mashed potatoes?! hardly ever exist in the Ecuador) and sat around for a while more talking to Lincoln about how he wants to start his own business, because the one he works for now is owned by this guy from Holland who makes the tours kind of expensive and geared towards tourists rather than students.

On Sunday, we woke up and set out on one more bike ride (again, about 2 ½ hours) to Sigcho, the next town over. On this one it was about the same uphill/downhill deal as the last time, and the same warning about dogs. I got chased a little this time, but I stopped and used my bike to shoo the puppy away, and a few other times I just got barked at.Eva, Steph, and I stuck together for a good chunk of the time, so we were all fine… and we were all equally tired and incapable of biking up hills, so we walked together up some of them as Lincoln followed us in the jeep.

The boys reached the town way ahead of us, and we all ate lunch there before heading back to Quito.

As one last hurrah, Lincoln told us that there was one stretch right after the town that was all downhill and it was, guess what, asphalt! (as opposed to the dirt roads we had been on the whole trip… playing the pothole avoidance game…) This was my very close second favorite part of the trip. It was a really smooth ride all the way down the side of a hill to a river, and then we just packed up the bikes and went on home. Really, this was one of the best trips I had been on in Ecuador… and I had really missed biking! (and kayaking for that matter)

Tragedia en Lumbisí

On Monday, Elizabeth, Zack, and I were hanging out in Quito for a bit after classes (around 5pm or so). I got a text from Kelsey (who lives in Lumbisí next-door to Zack) saying something to the effect of “Hey I know you work with the kids in Lumbisí a lot and wanted to let you know that today 7 or 8 children died in the river.” I immediately began to freak out, even thinking that it could have been the class that I was supposed to be volunteering at that day that had gone down to the river. Zack called Kelsey right away to get more information, and she said that a bunch of kids had gone down to the river to fish or play or something, and there was some sort of dam or something that broke and the kids drowned and there was a rescue effort going on and of course crowds of worried neighbors. She wasn’t sure of the names of any of the kids that had been down there or whether it was for a class or just on their own or anything. She said she’d thought she heard the name Jeimy (pronounced “Jamie”) – but she wasn’t sure.

The three of us left right away for Lumbisí, Elizabeth came along for moral support despite that she’d never been to Lumbisí and this may not have been the best first experience there. When we got to Lumbisí after what seemed like the longest 45-minute bus ride ever, there was a huge crowd outside of the Casa Social in the main park along with a few ambulances and police cars and such. We found Zack's family pretty quickly and asked them what happened, and they confirmed more or less what Kelsey had said, but that at the moment there were 5 dead, 4 saved, and 1 still missing. They were not all from my class, instead they were mostly from 6th grade and had gone to the river on their own after classes, around 1:30, to try to catch fish to sell at their school. Kelsey’s sister, Grace/Estefa (either name) is in 6th grade and thus knows/knew a lot of them. We asked them if they knew any names and they weren’t sure either, they did think that at least one might’ve been from the street leading to Zack and Kelsey's houses. We decided to head in the direction of Zack's house, whilst looking for other people we knew to see if they knew any more and just for the sake of talking to people. After a bit we ended up at my house and decided to go next door to Kelsey’s to be with Estefa. She and her 12-year-old brother Alex were home, their dad was still working and their mom was up in the park. They were watching TV, as they knew that in the next hour or so the story was going to air on no less that 3 news channels. Estefa was pretty messed up, though not totally gone (not in an injured sense, in a sadness/grief sense), and managed a few laughs to the Simpson’s, which was on before the news. She knew more specific names and confirmed that Jeimy, the girl I know from volunteering, was one of the ones that died. The pain in her face as she told us the names was heartbreaking.

Eventually the news did show the incident, but there wasn’t much of anything that we hadn’t already known, except that one of the first women that made it down to help (there were 2 kids that ran up to town to get help when the others were caught in the water) was the mother of a girl named Blanca, and she had managed to save three children but couldn’t make it to Blanca, who could only wave goodbye to her mother. She later drowned. The report showed Blanca{s mother attempting to talk to the reporter, but barely being able to get any words out, so bothersome and horrible to watch. Evidently, a few of the bodies were found down the river as far as Tumbaco, which for those of you who don’t know (most), is a good 5-plus miles. When the names of the deceased and the missing girl showed up on the screen, Estefa buried her head in the pillows and of course the rest of us couldn’t quite hold everything back.

We thought that the funeral was going to be Tuesday, but they wanted to wait until the girl who was missing was found, which didn't happen until Wednesday.

They held the funeral on Wednesday at noon for the 5 children: Alex Shuquitarco, Blanca Guamán, Edison Pujota, Jéssica Herrera, and Jeimy Tusa. All were 10 and 11 years old. I attended with my coordinator, Maria Teresa, who helped organize the volunteer work that we do in Lumbisí, and she also comes by the after-school program when she can. To see all the parents sitting in a row in front of five little caskets was devastating. I stood with a girl from the Oratorio (volunteering), Shelley, who I think is the same age as the children who died, for a while, and also with Estefa.

We walked up to the cemetery and I just heard screams and cries from the families. The sister of Jessica was crying "Mi ñoña! mi ñoñaaa!" (my sister! my sister!) and her and the mother of Jessica fainted. I was confused and just sad for a while because I didn't know which way to go to for Jeimy, I had brought flowers for her. Her coffin was put in a niche and closed off with bricks, but I managed to give my flowers along with many others before it was closed. Her mother also fainted in front of me, so I gave the family the water I had and broke down crying.

Seconds after that happened, a reporter nearby got a phone call, and as he went running away he said "Encontraron la otra chica!" (They found the other girl!) All the children went running out of the cemetery to find out anything they could about the missing girl, Mayra Cerón. For some reason, as I left the cemetery, there was a rumor floating around that they had found her alive, but it turned out that they found her under some sand or rocks on the bottom of the river, already there for 2 days.

We found out that the cause of the rush of water was that some Electric company that controls the flow of the water upriver let the gates open to clear the river of garbage. Usually, in the past, there had been an alarm. This water swept away the children, and 6 of them drowned. The company is denying any responsibility. They know that the families in Lumbisí have no money for lawyers, the families even had to borrow money from friends and family to pay for the coffins. Welcome to Ecuador.

Rest in peace, niños.

http://www.elcomercio.com/noticiaEC.asp?id_noticia=271962&id_seccion=4

Yes, I felt disrespectful taking pictures, but I want people who weren't there to understand what happened.

They held the funeral outside of the church because the whole town was there and wouldn't be able to fit inside.

Procession to the cemetery- This is Jeimy's 'grave'-

Semana Santa 2 - Of Utter Misery

So, Elizabeth and I arrived in Alausi on our bus from Loja.... at 3:00 am. We didn't want to walk around at all, so we found a hotel right where the bus dropped us off which was actually really nice. I called some friends on the bus that was coming to get us for the field trip and they said they were a few hours away. They ended up being a little late getting to the town, at about 6:30 am, so we got 3 or so hours of good sleep (in beds, as opposed to buses).

In the morning, I realized that I had left my hiking boots on the rack above our seats on the bus that took us to Alausi from Loja... (sorry mom, they're gone forever) I had flip flops... but that was NOT going to help me hike part of the Inca trail for our field trip. So after we met with the group and had breakfast, I went with my professor to go buy some shoes. I only had the money Zack had given us, and we still needed some for food. Unfortunately, I didn't know that it would have served me well to have rubber boots, which about half of the group had, so I bought gym shoes, which were twice as expensive. :(

We set off to a small town called Achupallas, and at some point our bus stopped and said that we would have to take trucks to go further along because the roads couldnt support the big bus we were in. Some Ecuadorian men packed our stuff onto a truck... which looked a little shady because they put our bags on a tarp-like roof supported by one pole, hanging over all of us sitting in the truck bed. It was about an hour ride in a pretty darn uncomfortable position... but it wasn't raining or too cold... so we were alright.

When we got to Achupallas we thought there were going to be mules there waiting to carry our stuff... but we waited... and waited... and finally about 2 and a half hours later the mules came so we could start our looooong hike. My shoes got muddy in the first hour for sure... so it wasn't too great, and I was really regretting my purchase. It was also raining a bit, but we went through a cool mountain pass and saw a river down below. We got to a big open area and set up camp for the night... it was already getting cooold.

That night we used the last of my iPod battery and had a sing-along in our tent :) That kept us warm for a while, and some hilarious ecuadorian guys came and joined in for a little while... but then Elizabeth and I kicked everyone out and got some sleep. Also, we ate our food, tuna and crackers... which was eaten many, many more times, because that's basically all we bought... mmm survival food :P The other girls on the trip were so nice though, so they gave us some snacks and peanut butter later when we were running out of food.

Anyways, we started the next morning and hiked FOR-EV-ER. I'm not the best hiker, and I wasn't the worst in our big group (about 25) either, so for a good 2 or 3 hours I was basically hiking alone in between the fast group and the slow group. The trail was easy to follow for most of that part of the day, and I also passed the mules once, then they passed me, then I passed them again, then they passed me again. This whole time it was baaad weather... rainy and cold. I'm pretty sure I was the most miserable I had ever been in my entire life. Especially since hiking alone for a few hours messes with your head...

I caught up to the first group in the early afternoon where we all stopped for a lunch break. This was also the part where our guide (Ecuadorian guy that was hired who knows the trail) said that the trail gets hard to follow, so we all have to stay together. When the slower group caught up with us, we began to hike across the top of a bunch of mountains. I was a little confused, because our professor (Canada lady, who i talked about in a previous post here) had gone ahead with a few students, even though the guide who knew the trail was behind in the group with us. Hiking across the mountains, we were pelted by horizontal rain and high winds from the side, FUN. At one point, the guide stopped and said something to the effect of "this is the highest point on the trail.... here is where the Inca blahblahblahblah...." After about 2 sentences, a few of us in the front just yelled "Siga! Por favor!" (Keep going!) because we weren't about to stand in the freezing rain and listen to a lecture when we could walk faster and get off the god-forsaken mountain. He was very understanding, and we kept walking.

Eventually we went down the mountains and came to a river with a big open area. There we found our professor and some students, but when we all joined up they realized that someone was missing. A boy from Riobamba, Adrian, had gone off in front with our professor, and she had gone ahead of him and thought that he went back to find us. He was all alone, and he (as we learned later) had fallen down some sort of small cliff and passed out.

So when we were all together they sent the ecuadorian guide backwards on the trail on a horse. We had all stopped walking (obviously) and were freeeezing at this point... so we huddled like penguins and waited for our professor and one of the teaching assistants on the trip to go check out some little huts that were on the side of the mountain to see if we could stay in them.

P.S. At this point, we were supposed to have been camping at Ingapirca... which was still about 2 days away... Time estimates = WRONG

The profe and TA signaled for us to come up because the little houses were abandoned... so we could stay somewhere "warm" for the night. We all packed into a little hut that was clearly meant for animals, and organizated ourselves on top of hay and rocks, and some people started to make a fire in another one of the huts that was more open so smoke could get out. We all changed out of our wet, wet, clothes, and tried to arrange ourselves in our sleeping bags in the small barn so that we could all be close together for warmth, but still comfortable... which never really happened...
At this point, the guide still hadn't come back from trying to find the missing kid, so right when it was getting dark, they sent out one of the TA's and a mule-leading guide to go try to find a cell phone signal to call the military or someone to search for the boy, and to call his parents in Riobamba.

As we were drifting in and out of sleep, at about 1:00 am there was yelling and scrambling for flashlights... the 2 people who had gone to try to find a cell phone signal had found Adrian! He had to walk back though, because it wasn't the guide on the horse that found him. He had been missing for something like 12 hours, and I didn't see, but my friends said he was clearly hypothermic and looked just horrible. He had only had a jacket, and no hat or gloves, plus he had passed out earlier and then woke up not to know where he was or which way to go. There was lots of scrambling for food and water to give him, and they started up the fire again to get him warm.

The next morning, we set out with promises of reaching a town later in the day. It was a long, even more muddy hike, where I had to pause many times to make decisions about where to jump so that I wouldn't fall in water or mud... but EVENTUALLY we made it to San Jose de Colebrillas at about 1 or 2 in the afternoon. From there, we rode in the back of a truck in the rain for about an hour, and my friend Kelsey and I were also buried under bags and tents... so we didn't get too wet. We arrived in Tambo and were able to catch a bus to Cuenca, where we would stay the night.

We got to our hotel in Cuenca and it was absolutely amazing. Elizabeth and I were so relieved to see the polar opposite of where we had slept the previous night... a King size bed, enough storage space for a family of 5, a gorgeous bathroom with HOT water (somewhat intermittent, but only because everyone was trying to use it at the same time), and two balconies. After one of the hotel workers showed us into the room... we just started to crack up in sheer amazement.

That night, we had obviously run out of food, and we both had no way of getting money (Elizabeth's debit card had expired by the way, whereas mine was stolen... both were in the mail on their way to Ecuador at the time) So we would have to find a fancy restaurant that would accept credit cards. Lonely Planet pointed us in the right direction, as always, to Cafe Eucalyptus. We had a HUGE dinner, after half-starving half-surviving-on-tuna for the past 2 and a half days, with smoked trout salad, Pad Thai, pork and pineapple skewers, and quesadillas, followed by a banana's foster for my dessert, and a chocolate cake for Elizabeth. We watched a live salsa band there for a while and then headed back for an amazing night's sleep.

We woke up the next morning and got the breakfast included with our hotel (sweet!) and then went off to run some Cuenca errands before we had to meet at noon to go to Ingapirca (Incan ruins). The errands consisted of finding a famous panama hat store (sidenote: Panama hats are from Cuenca, Ecuador, not Panama... don't ask me why they call them that... no idea) and getting to internet. At the panama hat store we got Elizabeth's uncle a hat, and got one for Zack, as he hadn't had time to get one when we were in Cuenca before. I also managed to leave my (really Liz Girten's) Lonely Planet somewhere in the store :( and now it's gone forever... unless I go back to Cuenca and they happen to have kept it... Then we found internet, went back for lunch with our group, and went off in a bus to Ingapirca.

Again, time estimates were quite off and we got to Ingapirca right when it was closing. Luckily, our professor convinced them to stay open for one more hour, and we got a sweet tour of some amazing ruins. This was definitely a good way to end a crazy, mostly terrible, trip. We were there right at sunset, and there were so many cool pictures that I took with the sun shining on the monuments/walls/etc.

After making a list of all the quichua words we could remember, we rode in the back of a truck (on a beautiful night, not raining) to Tambo, and had dinner in a little restaurant while we waited for a bus back to Quito. We arrived home in Quito on Sunday morning at about 6:00 am. And so ends my Semana Santa vacation!!!

Whew.

Semana Santa 1 - Of Amazing Experiences

Alllllrighty! This was what my spring break was like... and there were about 10 days of it so it may be long... and I'm splitting it into 2 very distinct halves...

Thursday (April 9th): First day of break! I got my new Censo that had been stolen from me along with my debit card and $90 (oh yeah, i never told that story... basically when my brother, dad, and I were going to the Brazil vs. Ecuador game a long time ago to buy tickets, someone slashed my bag on the bus (Ecovía) and took a little black change purse with all that stuff in it). So later that night we all went to my friend Elizabeth's to hang out. This is the 4 of us who are going on a trip for the first half of break: Me, Elizabeth, Pierce, and Zack.

Good Friday: We made a sweet breakfast of pancakes and piña eggs - an invention of Pierce's - and then we went off to Terminal Terrestre to catch a bus to Cuenca. At first we thought the only one left at 5pm and we would have to sit there for the whole afternoon, but we went to some other companies and found one that left at 1pm. We arrived in Cuenca pretty late, and we had picked out a hostel, but the taxi driver told us it was dangerous, so we had him take us to a nicer (and more expensive...oh well) one.

Saturday (Sábado de la Gloria...aparentemente): We did a bit of wandering around Cuenca, and it's just BEAUTIFUL! We said we even like it a little better than Quito. Much cleaner, calmer, and just a simple, quaint, city. All of us stocked up on food for the next 2 days, which we would be spending at Parque Nacional Cajas. Pierce also bought some materials for fishing, everything but the pole, because he didn't want to hike around with that.

At noon we left for the park, which was just about an hour bus ride away, which took a little longer because of construction.When we got there it was not-so-gorgeous weather, so the ranger guy suggested we stay in the Refugio (refuge/ranger station) that night. We agreed, and left most of our stuff there whle we went out hiking for the afternoon.

The views were gorgeous, we went up and down some hills and by some lakes.
On the way back, Pierce thought it appropriate to claim an island. It was really shallow water and the island was close to the shore of the lake, so he waded through the cold water to get to it. Pierce was also wearing all khaki that day (and a few other days later in the week) so he ran around claiming the island in the name of 'Khaki Man!' Eventually he invited us to his island, and we reluctantly walked through the water to get to it... but it was well worth it :)

That night, we used the kitchen at the refugio to make pasta with lentils, and some popcorn. We also danced around the kitchen (thanks to my handy-dandy portable iHome, again) and probably kept the ranger-guy awake, but hopefully not too late. Pierce also read us all the bible stories about Easter... with intermittent pop quizzes :) It was a lot of fun.

EASTER Sunday!: On Easter morning, me, Zack, and Elizabeth slept in while Pierce went out to the lake next to the refugio to try to catch some trout. He came in to wake us up at 10:30 or so with no success. Oh well, I guess we'll have to go eat at the restaurant for lunch... no fishies to cook. The weather was no better, but after lunch we set out to another part of the park on the other side of the highway, planning on camping the night and then leaving the park a different way the next day. Oh, also, that morning I woke up to find my camera broken :( I can still take pictures but the screen broke so I can't see anything. I think I either had dropped it or it froze at night (it was reeeaaally cold). Anyways, we hiked for a while, but while we were walking down a muddy slope I fell a little and thought I heard a crack in my ankle. I totally freaked out, as did everyone else, but I turned out to be just fine, it was just a little twist. At one point we came up over a hill and saw the most gorgeous view ever... the park is SO big!

Then we kept hiking and got fairly confused as to which lakes were which on the map, and if we were even on a trail at all. The paramo (ecological area that the park is in) consists of a lot of lakes, little streams, no trees, bushy plants, and lots of mud. Some of the streams are actually underground and they have these little green plants growing over them, that you can sometimes step on and sometimes not... Well, it was hard to tell where the trails were because 1. there were no signs and 2. the little streams were easy to walk along, and there were lots of them, so any of them could have been trails.

We did know which direction we were going, and we knew which way the highway was, so we went that way. But, the way we went led us to a big ridge of mountains that we would have to get over to get to the highway, and possibly to some cabins that we saw on the map. Pierce went up first (being the daring, experienced hiker that he is) to find a way for us to go. It was getting a little late, and we saw Pierce go over the mountains in a way that looked super-scary, so we were planning on camping up in one of the only flat areas we could find, which was already windy and cold.

If you look closely, you can see Pierce up there:
Luckily, from way up on the mountain Pierce found us another way that was safer to come up, and he said that from the top of the mountain he could see a bunch of cabins and the highway on the other side. With that motivation... the rest of us climbed up the mountain... which was quite strenuous, but worth it. When we got to the top, the sun was just starting to go down... but luckily we could see the cabins, so we got to them before dark.

Top o' the mountain:

Yeah, so since my camera broke, i didn't notice that I was taking pictures with the shutter half-closed, but i think this looks cool anyways:

When we got to the cabins it had just gotten dark, so we broke out our headlamps and yelled "buenas noches!" a few times. No answer... Zack and Pierce went to check out some cabins on the other side of the little lake they were by, but nobody was there either. We all thought... hmm... this is how scary movies start...

Determined as ever, Pierce kept checking every window on the cabin that we had put our stuff by. Just when we're ready to put up the tents in the 'yard' next to a cabin, we hear "I'm in!". Pierce had gotten a small window open... just big enough for us to fit through... barely. Also, when he went into the abandoned cabin he realized the electricity worked! Which was a big surprise. We passed all our stuff in and climbed in through the window, then we made some bacon 'n' beans for dinner, and Pierce tried to start a fire. The fire however, ended up smoking up the whole cabin, because the chimney was only half-open. We all sat on the ground or by windows for a while, trying to fan out all the smoke, which worked out okay after a while. After that failed-attempt we were too scared to try again, so we lit a candle and roasted some marshmallows over it to have s'mores. Overall, probably one of my most interesting and memorable Easters ever.

Monday: We woke up and walked just a few feet to the highway, and we were waiting for a bus to take us back to Cuenca, but none came for quite a long while. So we hitched a ride in the back of a pick-up with some bananas and a stack of chairs... hah. There was the same construction on the way back, so we were sitting for a long while in a line of cars, but we eventually got back to Cuenca. We went straight to the bus terminal and caught a bus to Loja right away. It's not too far away, so we arrived in Loja in the late afternoon and wanted to get to Zamora (about 2 hours away) so we could stay there for the night and hike in Parque Nacional Podocarpus in the morning. While we were waiting for a bus in Loja we checked the internet quickly and grabbed some dinner. When we got to Zamora we found a pretty sweet hostel for just $4 a night (the one we stayed at in Cuenca was $10... super-caro! hah)

Tuesday: We woke up and took a taxi to Parque Nacional Podocarpus... and it was nice and warm out :) much different than the nights spent in Cajas.

We hiked aroudn for a while, and saw some great waterfalls. This one is 'La Poderosa':

Again, Pierce made the decision to go ahead of all of us... and we, as always, thought he was crazy at first. But then, we all finally went swimming in the huge waterfall, and it was one of the most amazing experiences ever. Pierce liked swimming so much that he went in another waterfall later in the day along with Zack.

At the end of the day, we had to leave the guys so that Elizabeth and I could meet a group for a field trip in another city about 9 hours away. We took a bus from Zamora back to Loja, and in Loja I realized that for some reason my ATM card wouldn't work at the bus terminal. I went to try 2 more ATMs but they didn't work either. This was a big problem, because Elizabeth and I needed to buy enough food for our field trip to last 2 to 3 days. Luckily, Zack loaned us some money so that we wouldn't starve, and we went off to meet our field trip in Alausi at 6 am the next day...

SORRY!

I haven't posted in FOREVER, but I honestly have had NO time, including right now...

Mike came to visit, Family came to visit, we all had an AMAZING time and I miss everyone lots :( But I'll talk about our adventures later...

For now, I'm leaving for 10 days on Spring Break!!! So much fun, here's whate we're doing (by 'we' I mean Zack, Pierce, Elizabeth and myself for the first half - until Alausi - and then I'm on a field trip with Archaeology and bringing along Elizabeth, Kristina, Stephanie, and 2 friends from Michigan State, Kelsey & Tricia)

Friday morning (4/10): leave Quito for Cuenca
stay Friday-Saturday night in Cuenca

Saturday: Parque Nacional Cajas
camp in park Saturday-Sunday

Sunday: night- leave for Loja
stay Sunday-Monday in Loja

Monday: Parque Nacional Podocarpus
camp in park Monday-Tuesday

Tuesday: night- leave for Alausi

Wednesday: Alausi, Achupallas
camp Wed-Thurs Laguna Culebrilla

Thursday: hike to Ingapirca
camp Thurs-Friday at Ingapirca

Friday: Ingapirca, Cojitambio, Cuenca
spend the night in Cuenca

Saturday: Cuenca (downtown, museums)
spend night in Cuenca

Sunday(4/19): bus back to Quito

No homework, just adventure! I hope I'll have enough room on my camera :) Now I'm off to go rent a tent... be back in 10 days!

-Caro

Excitement!

So, as I finish 5 or so different assignments this Friday in Saturday, I will be patiently waiting for the novio to come on Saturday night :) The following Saturday, my parents and my bro arrive! 

I will be sooo busy in the next 2 weeks, which is exciting, and also a little stressful, but totally worth it. I plan on going to La Mitad del Mundo a couple of times, the Teleferico (which I haven't done yet... yay!), the Centro Historico, and some other day trip things like Otavalo and Papallacta.

This past weekend we went to Papallacta on a group trip, which was really fun! We went on a hike near a river with lots of waterfalls for about an hour or so, and then swam a little in the freezing cold river followed by the hot springs. Some of them were way to hot to get into right after going in the river, but there were a bunch with all different temperatures, so we went for one that didn't make us feel like we were being stabbed with a million needles when we got in. 

We had a good lunch of cheese & potato soup and trout, with a really good chocolate cake for dessert, and then headed home on the bus. I drifted in and out of sleep listening to music, and then someone realized that outside it was SNOWING! I believed seeing snow on a super tall volcano, but we were just driving along towards Quito... so it was a little strange :)

Anyways, I'll attempt to update while visitors are here, but I might be out having TOO MUCH FUN! Yaaaaay :)

Volunteering pics

3 sisters! Shelley (i think), Morelia (bebé), y Mayorie

Outside :)

Jess (another volunteer) helping some kids with homework

Mariela (from Lumbisi, she comes every day and brings her own kids too) helping with homework

Me here with Kevin! recently much less travieso. I think it's because Washington hasn't show up for a little while.

2 girls from Oregon here for a month! They're on their "gap year" which I didn't know existed, but apparently it's a year you take off between high school and college, and they're traveling/volunteering all over Latin America! SOOO cool!

Jessica, Kevin's little sister.

She always looks so confused! I swear she laughs all the time, I guess just no smiling for pictures.

The kids doing their deberes (apparently deberes = tarea, same thing, but they always say deberes here)

Another Kevin, but this one's 2 years old :) and hilarious.
Jess with the kids!

COLD Milk

At home (U.S.), it's not so hard to have a refreshing glass of cold milk once in a while. Here, it's a little bit more difficult. The milk usually comes in a small box/carton, but it's kept outside of the refridgerator, on the counter. Even in the grocery stores they just sell tons on the shelves. I'm assuming this is totally sanitary because everyone drinks it here, and I've now had it many many times and feel fine.

But anyways, occasionally my family actually puts the milk in the fridge, and I take full advantage by having a glass of it.... yummm. Like today, I was given chocolate cake, and so I hoped oh so very much that there would be cold milk, and there was! Yay host fam, good job today :)

Also, sometimes it's difficult because there is also milk that comes in bags (It's cheaper I think). So they sometimes buy that and it's always in the fridge, but I can't cut the bag open and drink it because then you can't just put it back without it spilling everywhere. I think one time Ellie (our maid) put the rest in a pitcher after opening it, but i don't really want to go exploring through the kitchen for pitchers. Oh well, the milk-in-a-bag will just have to sit there taunting me with it's inaccessible coldness and deliciousness...

Celebrity Deathmatch: Spanish vs. English

No Apagues la Luz < Don't Turn Off the Lights (Enrique Iglesias)

Dimelo > Do You Know (Enrique Iglesias)

Suerte = Whenever, Wherever (Shakira)

Ojos Así < Eyes Like Yours (Shakira)

Arqueología Andina > Andean Archaeology

APPARENTLY my archaeology class is being taught in English now... Not the woman's fault who is teaching the class (very nice, pretty decent lecturer & such) but our nutzo professor's... At the beginning of the year he decided he could teach 3 separate classes (Arqueología Andina, Sociedades Amazónicas, and something else) while also holding a job as the "Vice Minister of Culture" with the Ecuadorian government. About 3 weeks into classes he decided he couldn't do it all, and began to give up the classes for the government job, WITHOUT TELLING US. He skipped about 4 or 5 classes (at 8:30 in the morning mind you, so I woke up at 7ish for nada) and then later apologized and explained to us how he was going to find a replacement (this also took up a whole class, without spending any time actually teaching us anything)

The replacement teacher came just a little while ago, and SORPRESA! The class is now in English. No offense really nice Canadian lady, but I signed up for a class in Spanish, and so did the 5 other Ecuadorians in my class. I'm actually not sure if the Ecuadorians are even pissed about it (the university I'm at is faaancy-schmancy, a.k.a. most of the kids previously went to some sort of bilingual/multilingual private school where they almost certainly learned English, but I'd rather not make that assumption). I guess we'll just have to wait and see if me and another Ecuadorian girl (who I already know speaks fluent English) will have to translate things for the rest of the class or not. Ah, bueno :P

Vamos al Parque!

Because there was no school on Wednesday, some of us decided to explore Parque La Carolina, a biiiig park in Quito. I brought the frisbee I had just bought before vacation and headed out with Zack and Pierce. On the Ecovia we ran into our friend Bryan who came along after grabbing a bite to eat. While we were walking to find a good place to throw the frisbee around this black dog came up behind Pierce and nuzzled his leg, and then he did the same to me (Not Pierce, the dog). While we were frisbeeing the dog was just chillin' out under a tree, he had obviously become our friend.

As we started to walk away he followed us, so Pierce came up with a name for him: CumbiLumbiQuito (combining the 3 places me, him, and Zack live). We got to a little playground area with a bunch of old construction equipment (bulldozers, steamrollers, etc.) turned into playground equipment. Dangerous? Not in Ecuador! There was also a large tree trunk that was about 8 feet tall, and the guys stood on top of it while we tried to play some elevated frisbee.

Then, we came upon an area where there was an entire airplane turned into a playground, but there was a fence around it, and apparently kids got in through this little hole in the fence, which we didn't really feel like attempting to fit through.

We walked past a ton of soccer fields and basketball courts, and came upon the botanic garden, which cost $3.50 to enter, so we decided to come back and do that another day. Right after the garden there were boats! We all agreed that a row boat would be cooler than a paddle boat, and then found out that it was cheaper, so we (mostly them) rowed around the figure 8 river/lake type thing for half an hour or so, debating whether to crash into the boats with ecuadorian couples making out in them. Ughhh, SO much PDA here.

After that we wandered a little more and found a skate park (Mom! I guess you should probably let Kev bring his board... plus the park is fairly close to your hotel) and a dirt bike track, which would probably be sweet to see some races on.

After leaving the park, we went to a HUGE mall that we didn't know about before, and explored the grocery store, toy store, book store, and candy store :) Good "Professional Development Day" for me! Don't know if I can say the same for our professors stuck in school... muhahahah.

Carnaval at Puerto Lopez!

Ok, sorry for the delay, I've been taking tests, entertaining children while trying to do my homework all weekend, and realizing that all the big sorts of projects that I have to do are coming up sooner than I thought. Thankfully, now I have time to blog because tomorrow there's no school! That's right, Wednesday = "Professional Development Day" (hm, are we back in high school?). I will gladly accept it and hopefully do something fun tomorrow :)

So for Carnaval vacation (February 20th-24th) 3 friends and I went to Puerto Lopez.

Thursday night/Friday
We left Quito at around 9:30 on a bus with the company Panamericana. Thankfully, we did not have to catch the bus from 'Terminal Terrestre' in southern Quito, which is apparently in a dangerous area. The bus was overnight to Guayaquil and it was supposed to take about 9 hours, but it took more like 12. At night we were treated to a wonderful film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme, where he fought an evil army of brain-altered big guys while saving his daughter and having to choose between two women (one of them turns evil so it's not such a hard choice). He's a single dad too just in case you were worried about why he's having these "adventures" with other women. In the beginning of the movie the sound on the bus was terrible, so when the sound of the movie wasn't playing there was a horrible noise that I think I have since blocked from my memory. Also, this whole thing started at about 11 pm, when many people on the bus (not including myself and amigos though) were already asleep or trying to fall asleep. What better to fall asleep to than the sound of explosions, gunshots, and large men grunting?

Eventually I went to sleep, which took a while to happen, but once I was out it went pretty well. In the morning we were woken up with another masterpiece (since when do italics denote sarcasm? I think I just made that up), The History of Michael Jackson - through music videos! They were in chronological order, oh joy... mommy? why is the man getting whiter and whiter? and creepier and creepier? We got some Billie Jean, Beat it, some strange video with a bunch of celebrities where nobody actually does anything, and then half way through Smooth Criminal the DVD player must have committed suicide (*copyright - 'Z' Feb. 26th, 2009*). We then arrived in Guayaquil and began to look for a bus to get us to Puerto Lopez. A man came up to us and asked if we needed some help. We thought he must just be a nice guy trying to show us poor gringos the way around. NOPE. After showing us a booth with 'Puerto Lopez' clearly labeled, and talking to the company to buy our tickets for us, then showing us where to get the bus and where we could sit and wait, he was of course expecting a tip. This was all something we definitely could have done on our own, and we were not happy about his crazy stalker habits. I gave him a dollar and we just told him to go away. Then we headed to the food court and I got some Pan de Yuca (delicious!) and some others got Pizza and such. We caught our bus to Puerto Lopez at 11am-ish, which was not nearly as nice as the bus we came to Guayaquil on. But I met some nice girls from Seattle on the bus (who we would continue to see around town all vacation long) and took a little nap. Towards the end of the bus ride we had some cool views of the coast, and when we were dropped off in Puerto Lopez we were just a block and a half away from our hostel. We got there around 3:30pm, 18 hours total! In all, the bus rides cost us $13.20.

We had booked a room in Hostal Villa Colombia, so we got there and settled in. There were 2 bunk beds and one single bed, one more than we needed. Luckily, Pierce sat on one of the top bunks and broke one of the little wooden planks under it, so we obviously decided not to use that one. It turned into storage space, mostly taken over by Zack and I. We also had mosquito nets (in pretty pastel colors) and a bathroom. I probably should have taken more pictures of the Hostel because it was AWESOME. The owner is a woman probably in her 50s or early 60s named Mariana, and her son Galo (30ish) works at the hostel and is also a tour guide for Machalilla National Park. We got free use of the kitchen, which we took full advantage of throughout the "weekend". The stay was only $8 a night, and $10 if we wanted breakfast in the morning, which we only did for the first morning.

Friday afternoon we wandered around town and went to the beach to play with the frisbee I got (yay!). Some little boys decided to join us, which was fun, and we also walked down to the end of the beach with carnival rides and games :) We went to a little restaurant on the road that goes along the beach for dinner, and probably got the fastest service I've ever had at a restaurant (besides McDonald's). The food was really good too, I had some chicken and beef because none of us really felt like eating seafood yet (the coast = ceviche everywhere). I went to bed after talking to Galo and 3 women from Quito for a while (they're nice and work for the government doing cool stuff), and Zack and Kristina stayed up a bit longer and learned a new card game with them called Cuarenta (40).

Saturday
We started off the day with our lovely $2 breakfast served to us by Mariana, consisting of lots of fruit (pineapple, watermelon, and melon), bread and jam, eggs, and tea. We then asked her about how we could go about getting to Agua Blanca she was very helpful, and told us to take the bus there for 25 cents (instead of a motorcycle/rickshaw taxi, which would cost much more). We set off to this place, which is an indigenous town/archaeological site with a sweet sulfur lagoon t swim in and lots of cultural interestingness.

We got there and paid the $3 fee to get in, which includes a guide. In order to get to the actual town though, we had a good long hike that took about 45 minutes or so. It was super hot, but we saw some sweet animals along the way, like a wild boar, donkeys, and goats (LOTS of goats). When we got to the town there was a small museum, a restaurant, a little craft store, a church, and a soccer field (every town's gotta have one). We went into the museum and were introduced to our guide, as well as a couple from Argentina that totally cheated and took a taxi along the hike that we just did to get into the town. They were very nice though :) We went through the museo and then on a hike through the grounds and saw some sweet funeral urns, a dry river, and cool flowers. Towards the end of the hike we came upon the sulfur lagoon and went swimming for a good long while, very refreshing. It smelled pretty nasty, but looked pretty and was still lots of fun. On the bottom of the lagoon you're supposed to take the mud and put it all over to "exfoliate" and such. We just did it so that we would look like sea monsters.

After washing all the mud off we went to a teeny tiny restaurant next to the lagoon that just served ceviche, but it was $1 and very delicious. There were about 5 different things that you could mix into it, including mustard, ketchup, peanut sauce, green peppers, and onions. I scraped my onions off and got to mixin', and it all (surprisingly) tasted great together! As we learned later, the 3 ladies from Quito also came through Agua Blanca (we saw them at the lagoon) and they paid $2 for the ceviche! First instance of Ecuadorians getting "gringoed" on prices, hah. We think it's because their guide didn't stay with them or tell them how much it should cost.

We went up to a lookout point after lunching, which was gorgeous. Then we walked back to the town. The walk looked short from the lookout, but it took about 20 minutes in the hot hot sun, and i hadn't re-applied sunscreen after getting out of the lagoon (thinking that the walk would be quick too). So I got a sweet sunburn. Don't worry mom, I'm fine :P We got back to the museum and got a taxi from there to go to Los Frailes beach.

To get into Los Frailes, it costs $5, but the ticket we get for the $5 also includes entry to the rest of Machalilla National Park. This is also the price we pay with a Censo, the magical card that says we're semi-ecuadorian (we have a visa). When we got in to the beach I was amazed by how beautiful it was. The waves were huge and the sand was almost white, and there were NOT tons of people there! We all went swimming for a while until we found out that the beach closes at 4 pm. So we resolved to come back another day.

We were going to walk back to the entrance to the beach and wait for the bus on the main road, but our Argentinean friends passed by in a taxi and suggested that we share it with them (cheapness!) to get back to Puerto Lopez. We gladly accepted.

When we got back we wanted to make full use of this kitchen provided for us, so the amigos went out to find pancake making supplies. They ended up getting french toast making supplies instead (just as delicious, if not more so) and had a great search for maple syrup, which ended up being successful. We also had some yummy piña with our meal that Pierce bought for $1 (and every day after that, proceeded to go to the same place and ask for "the $1 piña").

At night we went out with Galo and the women from Quito (Violeta, Carina, and Paula) and also met some of Galo's friends who live and work in what they call the "Big Brother House". It's a bunch of marine biologists and volunteers that move in and out and do sweet experiments and research on the animals around Puerto Lopez, like sea turtles, dolphins, sharks (didn't see any of those), blue-footed boobies, and whales. It all sounded very exciting, and one of the girls living in the house was from Oregon and one was from Italy, they were both great to talk to, as well as Galo's other friends. Kristina and I were dancing around for a while while the 2 guys went and got $8 half-hour full body massages at a big tent that was set up on the beach. When they didn't come back for much longer than half an hour we went to go check, and they were fast asleep!

Sunday
On this fine day, some of our friends who were spending Carnaval in Montañita (about an hour south of Puerto Lopez) were coming to go on a tour of Isla de la Plata (we go there on Monday). Apparently Zack woke up and bought supplies to make breakfast for all of us and our friends, but when Pierce and I woke up all we knew was that Zack and Kristina were gone, so we assumed they had gone to eat breakfast somewhere. We went exploring around town and couldn't find them, and for some reason we didn't bring our phones with. Luckily I tried a great empanada for breakfast, and also got a cool twisty sweet bread thing, but I was still sad that upon our return our friends had already left for their island tour after eating a big breakfast of sausage and eggs made by Zack. Oh well :(

That day we decided on going back to Los Frailes, and we prepared by bringing lots of PB & J sammiches and putting on sunscreen por todos lados. We took the bus and met Galo there (who had rode bikes all the way there with Carina) and he showed us where to go on a hike to 3 different beaches, ending at Los Frailes. We hiked uphill to some cool lookout points over the coast, and first arrived at Playita Negra, a black sand beach. There were lots of rocks on either side, so our adventurous group of course decided to climb all over them. Zack unfortunately went a little far ahead, and ended up sliding down a big boulder and getting little cuts all over :/ it looked like it hurt. This was the one day that nobody brought their med kit... ayayay. Pierce was being much more cautious after that incident, but he still decided to climb over to a big cave somewhat far away.

We then proceeded to hike a little bit more to La Tortuguita, a long beach with an island only a couple hundred feet off shore. Pierce really wanted to go explore there too, but we convinced him (rightfully) not to because of the HUGE waves all over the place. The beach was really steep, and the waves were even bigger than at Los Frailes, so we were warned not to go swimming there. I just took some sweet pics instead.

Then the hike took us up to a biiig lookout point, on a cliff between La Tortuguita and Los Frailes. It was so amazing how blue the water was. We hiked down to Los Frailes and went swimming some more, after setting up Zack's tent that he brought for shade (originally intended for camping, but we didn't go because we would either still have to pay for a night at the hostel or lose the room). I also got a popsicle that melted in about 3 seconds, but it was still delicious.

In order to get back, we were just going to be somewhat cheap and walk to the entrance to take the bus again, when a pickup truck offered us a ride to the entrance in the back :) Then we were waiting for the bus to come, and it didn't for about 15 minutes so Pierce decided to stick out a thumb and ended up getting us a ride in a truck that probably transported fish. Mom, no worrying allowed about my awesome hitch-hiking experience, it's so common and plus I was with a group of people. Safe and fun! hah.

When we got home the girls that had gone to Isla de la Plata were going to be back soon, so I began to make Kelsey (from Penn State) some s'mores for her BIRTHDAY! We sang happy birthday and talked to them about Isla de la Plata for a while, and then they headed back to Montañita. We went out to see if we could go to a nice place for dinner, but one place was closed for construction or something, and a restaurant called Bellitalia was full for the night :( So we made a reservation there for the next day and went on a walk by the carnival and out to a different place for dinner. That night we hung out in the kitchen in the hostel listening to music (handy-dandy iHome!) and playing cards. Kristina taught us a great game called Mao... which was... entertaining to say the least :)

Monday
Isla de la Plata day! We woke up and got ready to go on the tour, and waited a bit for our friend Steph who was coming (also from Montañita) with us. Galo led us to the beach and we got on the boat to head off to the island (about an hour boat ride away, you can see it from the coast though). On the way there, the guides spotted a pod of dolphins (!!!) which we went to check out. This was one of the most exciting things I saw for sure. There were maybe 30 or 40 of them and they were just swimming and jumping, and then suddenly the whole pod would be on the other side of the boat. It was amazing to swim with dolphins in Mexico, but seeing them all swim in the wild was just an entirely different experience altogether.

We arrived at the island and were given some Coca Cola and little muffins to eat before going on our 3 or so hour hike. The hike wasn't as hard as I thought it would be in terms of walking uphill (just some in the beginning and most of the rest was small hills after that), but it was HOT. There's absolutely no shade on the island, so there's little shelter's/lookouts where we would stop and take pictures as well as re-apply sunscreen. We saw lots of blue-footed boobies! And we found it somewhat sad that we couldn't make boobie jokes in Spanish, because there they're called 'Piqueros patas azules'. We also met these guys from California that worked for a company called Island Conservation, and they were camping on the island for 5 weeks. Their job? CAT HUNTERS. Apparently cats had been introduced to the island and were eating the birds and their eggs, so they were hunting the gatos with big ol' rifles. I'm not positive if they were offended or not when I asked something like "So you guys are cat hunting?" and one guy said "More like saving sea birds" :) Eh, same thing.

We got to a place on te island where sometimes you can see a sea lion. That's right, one sea lion lives there. So lonely :( We got back to "base camp" and were given some more "refreshing" Coke (why is it that Ecuadorians think pop and beer are best during or after strenuous exercise?), then we got on to the boat to go to a snorkeling location on another part of the island. We got lunch on the boat, which was some good fruit (pineappple and watermelon) and some tuna and cheese sandwiches.

For snorkeling, the water was a little cloudy at first, but closer to the shore we could see the bottom and some cool fishies. Oh! and before we got in the water we actually saw a sea turtle! Some of us were feeding him watermelon but apparently you're not supposed to do that. Oh well, it kept him coming back :) Anyways, snorkeling in the cool water was so refreshing after the long hike, and while we headed back to the mainland I took a nice nap on the boat.

We made it back just in time to take super fast showers and get dressed to go out to our fancy Italian dinner. The place was beautiful, and the food was AMAZING. All the girls got the same thing (pasta with cream sauce, salmon and shrimp) and the guys both got lasagna. I also had some delicious chocolate cake for dessert, and Pierce got some Tiramisu that he had been craving all weekend.

We went back to the carnival after an extremely satisfying dinner, and Steph (who was staying the night with us in Puerto Lopez and going home with us the next day) and Pierce got some carnival food (cotton candy, donuts). We also watched this sweet game that people were betting on (including children... ah well) where they drop different colored bouncy balls down a chute with random obstacles, and you're supposed to bet on which color is going to win. We watched a few rounds and bet among ourselves without actually putting any money down, which I think was much more fun.

That night we played some more cards, this time "teaching" Steph how to play Mao (you learn as you go, that's pretty much the point of the game). I also had a crazy spilling spree, and we eventually moved all liquids away from my reach for the rest of the night.

Tuesday/Wednesday Morning
On Tuesday we were thinking about going to Los Frailes again (much less crowded than Puerto Lopez beach, especially on a vacation day) but it started to rain, and we were being lazy. We ended up making a big brunch with some eggs, sausage, and pineapple, and then tried mixing them all together, which was very very good tasting. We headed out to the beach at Puerto Lopez with the frisbee just to hang out and relax. Some guys started to play frisbee with us, which was fun, but one of them never really got the hang of it. There were also tons of kids on the beach (Puerto Lopez is more a family beach whereas Montañita is the college spring break beach), so of course I made friends with some little girls. Steph was reading her book and they were debating spraying her with 'espuma' (Ecuadorian version of silly string, used extensively during Carnaval in addition to water) and I convinced them to go for it. They were planning on just spraying her legs, but they got her whole back, which was somewhat hilarious. We all went in the water to wash the espuma off, and then a group of little boys kept getting Steph every time she got out of the water, such that she had to go back in to wash it off maybe 4 times. I think gringa girls are a huge target during Carnaval :P

Anyways, we headed back to the hostel to pack up and make some Mac n Cheese that Zack and I had bought intending to use it while camping, but we ended up using the kitchen to make it for dinner before our bus left. We had to rush a little through dinner, so that we could make it to the bus stop (just around the corner) at 7. Well, the bus ended up being about 40 minutes late anyways, and then we also had to get checked by the police as we boarded, which took another 20 minutes. Luckily, this company went directly to Quito, so we took a different route home and made it in only about 12 hours. They did play part of XXX (featuring the one and only Vin Diesel), but it stopped part-way through. We were stopped somewhere in the middle of the night for a while waiting in the longest line of cars ever to get through an area where there was only room to pass on one side of the road because of a semi-landslide. We finally got home in the morning and I made it to my anthropology class after dropping my stuff off at home :)

CARNAVAL = SUCCESS!

Carnaval Pics! Text coming later

Capoeira

Although this was a while ago, I went to a party at my friend's Capoeira school in the Mariscal (bar/restaurant area) and took some SWEET videos. The blonde girl is my friend who invited me (Ingrid) who I know from my sociology class, Problemas Sociales en el Ecuador. Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art/dance.

Volunteering in Lumbisi

Por fin, I will actually talk about the volunteer work I do twice a week... with craaazy crazy children, that makes me very happy :)

So, every Monday & Wednesday, I take the Lumbisi bus at around 2:30 (they come about 20-25 minutes apart, so I usually sit at the bus stop for a while listening to the ice cream (pop-ice in the u.s. a.k.a. bon-ice here and yogoso, the 5 cent more yogurty healthier version) people selling stuff in their awesome jumpsuits). I arrive at the school at 3:00 and stay until 5, when we usually wait some more for the bus and I get home around 5:45. Today I was super lucky because when I went to the bus stop, Lumbisi was the first one to come, and then I had to leave a bit early from volunteering at 4ish to buy our bus tickets to go on CARNAVAL VACATION!

Anyways... so pretty much every day there are a decent amount of kids who have some homework to do, but there are always some kids who don't have any. My job lately has been to distract the ones who don't have any work with some sort of activity so that they don't stop their friends/siblings from finishing their 'deberes'. What I started off doing was bringing my handy-dandy iHome (small version, easy for travel, battery powered) and my iPod, and teaching the kids Concordia dances (from Spanish summer camp, in case you're not familiar) including El Tiburon, Ritmo Vuelta, Magdalena, Alane, and the Macarena (that one's not so Concordia as much as popular culture). I was planning on doing some more activities on other days, like some cute name games, or a game we did at concordia with animals (cat, elephant, eagle.... if anyone wants to learn I can teach it to them sometime). But these kids are obsessed with my music! Besides dancing we've also listened to some Juanes, Aventura, and OMG High School Musical! (the girls loooove it a bit too much, I don't even remember how it got on my iPod, i swear)

I've also had to do a little disciplining (that doesnt seem like it's a real word...) to 3 troublesome boys. We've got Washington, the worst of the 3, who always thinks it's hilarious to do exactly what we don't want him to do, Kevin (go figure, hah) who is pretty nice but sometimes picks on really little kids who just cry as a reaction and he thinks it's funny, then there's another boy (he doesn't come every day, don't remember his name) and he just copies everything Washington does. I tried one day to implement the "naughty step" (escalera mala?) from my Nanny 911 lessons, but to no avail. I think I picked a bad location, because if I put one boy down and told them to sit on the step for a minute while I tried to make them understand why what they did was wrong, the other boys would come by and bug us, then the boy on the stair would escape. It was a bit frustrating, but eventually I came up with an idea that they should pick on me instead of picking on little kids, and that worked, i just gave them piggy-back rides and ran around the playground trying to "get away" for the rest of the time.

The compelation of this "after school program" is kids everywhere from age 1 to age 14 or so. Some kids bring their siblings, so there are some little ones running around, and a lot of the kids go to different schools, but they all live in Lumbisi. The program is run by FEVI, a foundation that my coordinator, Maria, is the founder(/president?) of, and the coordinator of this specific program's name is Andres, but it's been weird because he hasn't been showing up in the last 2 weeks that I've been working. The woman who is always there (she's amazing, and she brings her 2 kids with her) is Maria (a different one) and she lives in Lumbisi. I feel terrible that I can't be there more often, because then I think she's alone with up to 22 kids, all doing different things, and, you know, being kids. That's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I have aerobics so I can't go. Now there's also another girl from the university that comes on Wednesdays a little later than me (Jessica) and she's very sweet and has lots of fun with the kids. It's hard work, but SO worth it, they're all just adorable (even the traviesos).

Bueno, I'll update when I get back from vacay! I need to get AWAY from Quito, it's cold and rainy :( Playa here we come!!!


P.S. Zack, if you're reading this, my excessive use of parentheses, and parentheses within parentheses, came from reading your blog and then immediately writing mine... it rubbed off I guess.