Ecuador

Rachel and I almost died about 10 times this weekend. But no worries, we are okay, I promise

We were looking for a jungle tour very last minute on Thursday... as in the night before we wanted to leave. The jungle tour we wanted to go on turned out to have some problems, so we were left scrambling around La Mariscal trying to find a cool, cheap, last minute tour that had everything we wanted to do. We popped into a random tour agency run by an Australian man who had just started working there that Monday, his tour sounded good even though he didn't know what exactly he was selling since he hadn't yet been there himself, but we bought it anyway! The kicker was the fact that he was going to come on the tour with us and he agreed to be our chauffer to and from the jungle so that we wouldn't have to take another one of those crazy Ecuadorian buses driven by wannabe race car drivers.

The tour turned out to be an awesome adventure. We drove to Tena on Friday night with Julian, our tour agent, who is actually pretty close in age to us (25)... though he's married to an Ecuadorian woman. We were driving on the dirt roads through the Andes mountains and down through the foothills to the jungle at night, and it was a pretty scary journey. Mostly because Julian spent a good deal of time telling us scary stories and we all freaked ourselves out every time we turned a corner and discovered a creepy looking, deserted shack of a house. But the road itself was also a bit dangerous since we were driving in really terrible fog and there were constantly giant tankers and buses zooming past us. The rule of tonnage applies here in Ecuador, I guess, as it did in Vietnam... at one point we came face to face with a giant bus bound for Quito and it kept edging towards us without giving us time to back up and get out of its way! Crazy drivers. We also passed a family of 10 llamas lounging around on the side of the road. We tried to nudge them off the road but they must have had a death wish because they wouldn't move. We finally arrived in Tena at around 11pm, found a hostel, Rachel got scared of a black and red bug in the bathroom, we isolated it, put on our pjs, and crashed for the night.

The next morning we met up with the owner of the Sachapakari Lodge. He bought us some palm tree larvae... which were these giant, fat, white wriggling larval worms... and we got the chance to eat them. I was a bit disturbed by tehir heads because they had tiny prickly things on them, but after a minute of trying to actually put the thing in my mouth, I sucked it up and chomped off a big, delicious bite. The thing was actually really good! Rachel then tried to take a bite, and actually succeeded at biting the thing in half before she suddenly had a delayed reaction of disgust, flung one piece to the ground, spit the other one out, and ran away screaming. All of this is caught on video

After our larva feast, our guide took us to the Jumandy Caverns a bit outside of Tena. Jumandy was an indigenous leader in the 1500s who fought for his people against the Spanish conquistadors. He is a legend in the town of Achidona and there are statues, large naked paintings of him (?), and other references to him all over the town. He hid from the Spanish in the caverns and they were never able to find him in there because the cave system goes on for so long and is pitch black inside. We met up with two Ecuadorians from Santo Domingo who were joining our tour, Diego and Diana (who supposedly were not dating but it sure seemed like that was a lie!) and all went on a really exciting tour of the caverns. We went in barefoot, but it was actually a lot easier to grip the slippery wet, muddy rocks with our feet than with shoes on. We jumped around rocks, swam across giant, bottomless pools of dark water, found some stalagmites and stalagtites, as well as the giant 10 foot tall penis of Jumandy (a stalagmite formation). Deeper in the caves, there were some waterfalls and a 15 foot deep hole filled with water (similar to a small well). Julian was the only one who was able to touch the bottom! (I was too nervous to try swimming down there.) We hiked up and up some muddy rocks to get out of the cave, trampled across some muddy fields, and finally made it back to the start covered in mud and completely soaking wet. It was really fun

We then met up with some other people from the lodge who were already in the middle of their tour. We hiked to a lagoon on the other side of the Rio Napo where we went bird watching for a prehistoric-type bird. It has a really weird croaking type of call and looks kind of like a giant turkey... at least that's all I could tell as I tried my hardest to see it among the trees. Later we went to a family's house where we learned how to make chicha, a fermented drink that is made from the yucca plant. Traditionally it is made with human spit, but it wasn't this time. Women always are the ones to pound the yucca and prepare the drink. The indigenous people often drink chicha morning noon and night, sometimes even substituting it for a meal. The drink had a pretty bitter taste... didn't really like it much. On our hike back to the boat, I discovered that two of the girls in our group were from Germany so I tried to practice my German on them after not speaking it in a year and discovered that yes, I still can hold a conversation. Amazing. Though I found myself responding with ''Si, si!'' every time I wanted to say yes instead of ''ja''.

We then took a 40 minute drive through the jungle on a new road to get to our lodge in Misahuilli. Previously, Misahuilli had been THE cool jumping off point for jungle tours, but then Tena became a more popular place for tours to base themselves out of. However, Misahuilli still has some of the best jungle in the area so it was great that our lodge was in that area. We were really far our there... on our 40 minute drive on the rocky road all we passed were some random houses here and there, we forded a few rivers, and then had to hike another 10 minutes through the jungle to get to our lodge. It was really a beautiful place and I would definitely recommend the lodge and their tours to anyone! Everything was clean, beautiful, the food was amazing and they made sure to stuff us full for all our adventures. The guides were hilarious and really friendly.

That first night at the lodge was definitely very interesting. A shaman visited and demonstrated the soul cleansing techniques he often uses on family members and friends in the neighboring villages. He had been a shaman for 53 years (he started to learn from older shamans when he was 20), and he had a few sons, one of which was studying to become a shaman as well. Shamanism runs in families, apparently. He drank a cup of ayhuasca, a hallucinogenic plant that shamans use to alter their state of being and help them with their rituals. He passed around a cup with a few drops in it and we all got to try a teeny tiny sip. We all sat around the fire and listened to him as he chanted for a good 3 or 4 minutes, took a few drags on a cigarette, and then started hitting one of our fellow travellers on the head with a bunch of dried leaves about 100 times, all the while continuing his chanting. His assistant then lit another cigarette for him, he inhaled, then proceeded to blow the smoke onto the top of the man's hair. He then sucked a bunch of spit into his mouth, took another drag on the cigarette, and I could have sworn he spit on the poor man's head. Well, I soon found out for myself that the shaman did NOT spit on the guy's head.... for a minute later, Hugo pointed to me and said ''Come''. I was kind of confused, but went and sat in front of the shaman. I got the whole shebang! I was beaten on the head with leaves, had cigarette smoke blown into my hair as the shaman kissed my head, and... he didn't actually spit on me! Yes! But now I smelled like smoke. The entire time he was beating me on the head chanting, I had to try really hard not to imagine what Rachel was thinking as she watched me. I knew if my thoughts wandered to her... I would burst out laughing and offend the shaman. Didn't want to do that. I can't say he actually cleansed my soul, but I can say that I had an absolutely wonderful time during the next two days of the tour, so maybe I have him to thank for that?

After our shaman experience, we all drank some ayusca tea with rum (not the same as ayuhasca... this tea is just a normal tea) and we all sat in a circle around the fire and played some really silly group games for the next hour or two. Some of the games were so funny I started crying I was laughing so hard. And they were all great for practicing our Spanish! One of the games involved everyone counting off and taking on the name of ''1 limon 1'', ''2 limon'' and so on up until 11. The first person to start had to say their name first, then ''Medio limon'' and then call out the name of another person. It went really quickly and the point of the game was to not accidentally say ''melon'' as you fired out the phrase ''10 limon, medio limon, 2 limon!''. Later we played the game where someone says a word, and then each person afterwards has to repeat the word then add on another and gradually a really ridiculous sentence forms. Our best sentence ended up being: ''You and I are going to my house to fuck a rat, but nothing more, and if you would like a reference, ask my penis''.... aka ''Yo y tu iramos a mi casa chagar un rato, pero nada mas, y si tu quieres una referencia, preguntale a mi pene''. We played a few more games along those lines, and then went to bed to prepare for our crazy 5 hour hike the next morning.

So our hike. It was crazy, it was fast, it was really steep and involved a ton of rocks, boulders, puddles of mud up to our knees, slippery moss, fording across rivers in our boots and getting soaked up to our waists, crossing ravines one at a time across precarious bamboo bridges, swinging on jungle vines like Tarzan, swimming in the river, jumping off 30 foot cliffs into the water, and generally having a really fun jungle adventure Our guide, Hugo, literally ran through the jungle and up and down all the steep and muddy rocky trails... and somehow I was able to keep up with him. He told me I was a very good, strong hiker and wondered where I had learned to hike so well. Maybe I belong in the jungle and should start to work as a tour guide myself. Meanwhile, Rachel and Diana were hiking a bit slower and at one point we realized they were a good 10 minutes behind us all. Along the way, Hugo pointed out the medicinal uses of many jungle plants and trees and then we finally reached our destination... the waterfall. We swam around for a bit and I had some fun scaring the living daylights out of myself by jumping off some cliffs into the river below with our guide, Diego, and Julian. Then we started on our hike back, thankfully a bit shorter this time. Once we got back, Hugo joked that we were going to do the hike again later that night. I definitely don't think Rachel wanted to, and I just wanted to take a shower and get all the mud and sweat off of my body. It was a hard hike, but it is one I will remember for a long while.

Later that night, Diana and Diego left to go back to Quito since they had school the next day. Everyone else had left too, so it was just Rachel, Julian, and I and all three guides. We rested a bit, napped and read in the hammocks, had a delicious traditional fish dinner, and then settled down at the game table for a few hours of some crazy card playing. We played spoons, I taught everyone egyptian ratscrew, and then Julian taught us a really silly but hilarious game where each card represents an action (i.e. 9 means running around your chair and sitting down, 8 means slap the card, 3 means whistle, something else means moo like a cow, and so on) and each time the dealer flips over one of those cards, the last person to do the action loses and has to take the pile of cards that has built up. We were all doubled over laughing because it got to be so ridiculous. A similar card game involved everyone taking on a bad word or an animal sound as their name, and the dealer went around in a circle dealing everyone a card. If you got the same card as another player, you had to be the first to yell out their bad word name or make their animal sound or else you lost. For a while all you heard was moo! ballsack! cockadoodledoooooo! some bad word in Spanish I can't remember! meow!... it was great. Hehe.

As we played by candle light, of course we attracted all the bugs of the jungle to our table. A few of them had death wishes, like the llamas, and flew straight into the flame. Others tanned themselves. Then suddenly, I heard a rustle of leaves behind me. I turned around but couldn't see anything. Hugo noticed me turning around, so he looked as well and shined his light in the direction of the noise. Then he shouted to everyone ''Don't move! It will kill you!'', took his shoe, and stepped on the head of what looked like a giant moth with owl's eyes printed on its wings. We thoguht he was joking about the ''it'll kill you part'', but he had a very serious look on his face and so did all the other guides. Turns out it is the deadly Machacha moth that can kill a person within 2-3 hours if it stings you. It is literally the most hideous looking insect I have ever seen in my life because it has the head of a freaking devil serpant. A picture of one can be seen here... http://www.miputumayo.com/secciones/variedades/sabiausted/1127/machaca.jpg . Don't say I didn't warn you. I had nightmares about that thing! According to our guides, the only way to save yourself is to have sex continuously for 12 hours straight. We didn't know whether to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, or to scream and run for our lives. Except more of these devil moths could have been anywhere, and we didn't really want to die, so we settled on just screaming and jumping around like little girls. The guides all laughed at us, but kept to their story of it's deadliness. We decided game night was over at that point. Meanwhile, Julian was scared out of his mind as well, and happened to discover a giant spider the size of a dinner plate running along the ground. He screamed, we screamed, and then he flung it at us with his shoe. We screamed some more, hopped around, yelled about how we wanted to leave the jungle because we didn't want to die from the sting of a serpant moth, and generally acted like idiots. The guides were really excited, however, because apparently the moth is extremely rare. They had only seen about 2 or 3 of them in their lifetimes. According to them, the last time they had seen one, they were eating dinner at the lodge and one of the moths dive bombed their table and everyone was so scared that they all ducked and plopped their faces into their soup.

The next morning, we woke up somewhat refreshed, a little less scared of the Machaca moth (since it only comes out at night), but we were super paranoid about the bot fly that we had seen flying around on our previous hikes. This fly is also really scary... it targets your ears and shoulders, lays eggs, and then a giant, hairy larval worm grows in your skin and its incredibly painful not to mention DISTURBING. Oh, isn't the jungle wonderful? Well, minus the insects, I say yes. We went on a morning hike to ''The Lookout'' and literally ran through the jungle again. All the while, Hugo kept stopping every so often and smacking Julian on the head because he spotted a bot fly on his ear. Rachel and I then doused our heads with bug spray. As we were climing up a hill, suddenly Julian screamed and almost jumped backwards onto me. He had seen a snake. Hugo laughed hysterically. He must think we are all so silly, screaming at every bug or animal that comes our way. I'm sure he'll remember us fondly. Again, along the hike he explained some really neat medicinal uses of different plants... one of them you can use to make a poison to kill monkeys with, another you can use as a numbing agent if you are bitten by a scorpion, and so on. We also got to eat some ants that taste like lemon, which live in the base of certain leaves. On the way back we got to swing from some jungle vines like Tarzan again All in all, pretty neat but quick hike. Later we went tubing on the Napo River, came back for lunch, showered, and then we said goodbye to the lodge as we headed off for home.

Before we started our long drive home, however, we stopped off in Archidona to see some monkeys! My main goal for the trip! Hugo brought some red onions that apparently the monkeys love to rub on themselves as perfume. They all pounced on us out of the trees and were delighted that we brought them such wonderful presents. Two of them stole Rachel's AND Hugo's ice cream cones and then proceeded to enjoy them in the trees high above. One moneky jumped on Julian's shoulder and wouldn't get off. They were all just SO cute! They looked like creepy little humans, but still... they were cute. We heard some horror stories about how with other tourists, they would grab their cameras and smash them up in the trees into little pieces, or snatch their jewelry off their bodies. But I think they were content with our onions.

The ride back home was gorgeous during the last hours of daylight. The jungle and cloud forest area is one of my favorite parts of Ecuador so far. We had a few territorial dogs actually run AT our car as we were driving a good 50mph as if they actually thought they could scare the car away. We decided that the dogs really just had death wishes, like everything else on our trip did. I can't believe the dogs here. Words of wisdom to any future travelers to Ecuador... stay away from the dogs guarding cows and houses! Around Papallacta area, or halfway through the drive, it got REALLY foggy again to the point where we couldn't even see the road. The stupid thing about the country and jungle roads here is that they don't have reflective lines or anything, so you can't tell if you are on the right side of the road, or even if you are ON the road. It's terrible and incredibly dangerous. But we made it home safely, in part I think to all the Manu Chao we listened to on the way home that kept us all upbeat and alert.

Going back a few days prior to our jungle trip, on our last night at Cecilia's... we went to see an Ecuadorian film titled ''Cuando me toque a mi'' (When it's my turn) at the nearby independent theatre with our housemates. It was a very depressing and weird film with no clear cut ending, but at the same time I really loved it. Plus I was excited that I understood over half of what the characters were saying! Rachel and I are getting really good at understanding Spanish, though our spoken Spanish is still a bit basic since we just only recently learned some new tenses and direct and indirect object words. But even when we were in the jungle we were able to have some basic conversations with Diego, Diana, and our guides. Yay!

Anyhoo, Rachel and I are off to buy a bathing suit for her before we fly to the Galapagos Islands tomorrow morning at 9am sharp. I am so excited for some more sun, snorkeling, and animals.

Besos!
Kerri

So... last weekend Rachel, her friend Juliet, and I took a bus ride to Papallacta to relax a bit in the thermal hot springs. Papallacta is a really tiny town a bit southeast of Quito on the same road we´ll have to take to the jungle. It´s absolutely gorgeous. The bus ride there and back, however, was not so nice. At the bus station before we left, we were asked by a random old man in a business suit on the street corner if we wanted to step on his scale and be weighed. Then we got on the wrong bus and realized just a minute before it left the station that we had to quickly jump off. Our actual bus was then 45 minutes late so we left a bit later than we wanted to. Once on the bus, the driver decided he wanted to drive about 10 mph the entire way to Papallacta, which was great for our safety but he took forever to get us there!

The views on the way to Papallacta were really great, though. I think that area of Ecuador is definitely my favorite so far. It´s almost in the cloud forest, so there are always clouds lying low over the green hills. The town itself is tiny and probably only has a few hundred people. The thermal baths there are supposedly some of the best in Ecuador. Anyway, we got some lunch once we arrived and were served by a completely incompetent waitress. She came to take our order the second we sat down and we said we weren´t ready and asked if she could come back in a minute. But she didn´t come back for 10 minutes even though we stared her down with pleading eyes. Juliet finally went up to her and reminded her we needed to order and she said she´d be right over. She didn´t come. Juliet went up to her again and asked if we could order and the waitress then said, ¨But I already came and asked you if you wanted to order and you said you weren´t ready!¨... as if she had completely forgotten her conversation with Juliet a few minutes earlier. We finally got to order, only to discover that they were out of the tamales I wanted. Juliet and Rachel had ordered trout a few minutes earlier, but I had to re-order and decided on chicken. The trout came right away and I watched as they ate the entire thing. My chicken still hadn´t arrived. I was starving. Rachel and Juliet were done eating. The waitress seemed to have forgotten my meal entirely. Juliet went up to ask her what happened and she made up an excuse that there were 3 chicken orders in front of my order and that´s why it was taking so long. I watched the 3 chicken orders come out to the other tables and the people finished their chicken and I still didn´t get mine! At this point it had been about 30 minutes. Juliet went up to the waitress again and asked if maybe she´d forgotten to put in the order since she didn´t write it down initially. The waitress assured her there was no problem. Finally another waitress came and asked us if we wanted the bill and we pointed out that I still hadn´t actually eaten yet. She gave a little shout in surprise and ran to the kitchen... and came back with my chicken. It had been sitting there the whole time and nobody brought it out to me. I have to say, it was definitely good chicken, but I didn´t want to pay for it... so when a different waitress came to give us our bill I asked her if I could get my chicken for free. She looked at me like I was an idiot, but once we explained what had happened she said she´d go ask. She never returned. We looked around the restaurant and realized that the entire restaurant staff was having a meeting about my chicken and whose fault it was... at that point we realized we´d never get an answer so we just left... and didn´t pay for the chicken.

Other than that, Papallacta was great. We took a hike through the town and the hills with Juliet before she had to bus back to Quito that afternoon. We passed by a soccer field, a giant pipe carrying water up the hills (to Quito area?), a lot of pigs, and a whole lot more stray dogs. And again, there were a lot of people carrying around puppies like dolls. Still don´t get it.

We stayed the night at El Viajero, a small family run hostel on the ¨main¨dirt road through town. You can walk the length of the town in about 10 minutes. Our first view of the hostel included a view of the neighbor TORCHING A PIG WITH A BLOW TORCH... I am not quite sure why he was torching it, perhaps he likes the taste of crunchy, charred pig skin. I took a picture because I couldn´t believe what I was seeing. Later on that day after we came back from our hike, we discovered a pig head hanging from a giant hook on the porch and another pig with, er, half it´s body left, hanging from another hook. A little boy was skipping down the road carrying a bloody pastic bag filled with the pig´s feet. Other than the bloody and charred pig carcasses... the old man and woman running our hostel were so, so cute. They were probably in their 60s and had been running the place for at least 30 years. The woman was about half my size! We were the only guests so we got the chance to talk to them a lot and practice our Spanish. They cooked us some really delicious trout for dinner (trout was a theme dish that weekend) and asked us what type of animals people had in California. I think they thought that we lived in a place similar to their little farm town They had a chicken coop across the street and some cows on the hill that they tended to.

We went to the thermal baths that night and had to take a camioneta (small truck) up the hill to the nice hotel where they were located. He charged us $5 for the mile drive and we thought he was ripping us off since it was supposed tobe $2. We told him to come back to pick us up at 10:15pm but later realized we didn´t want to pay $10 to get to and from the baths so when we went home later we ended up getting a free ride from the hotel workers (¨as long as you say thank you, it is free!¨they said). Three of them piled into the truck with us, bombarding us with questions about ourselves and why we were in Ecuador on the way home. Somehow they misunderstood us or we misunderstood them because suddenly they were yelling out their windows at a bus bound for Quito, thinking that we needed to catch the bus and go home that night. We got home, watched some of the Miss Ecuador pageant (even cheesier than our pagents in the US), and fell asleep to the sound of large trucks, tractors, and buses with bad breaks passing through town all night on their way to the jungle.

We finally got a nice breakfast the next morning that didn´t consist solely of dry bread and jam. Yes! The woman told us that she and her husband had to leave to ¨tend to their cows¨for the morning but that they´d be back by 1pm. Rachel and I decided we´d go on a hike again to explore more of the hills. We started to walk down the main road, only to discover a mean looking bull around one of the bends staring us down. He didn´t seem happy to see us, and we didn´t know if he´d charge us once we got closer, so we changed our hiking route because of the darn cow. We started down the same path we´d taken with Juliet the day before. We suddenly heard some barking and saw a cow pasture in the distance in front of us and realized that the dogs who were guarding the cows had spied us on the trail. The path went right by the pasture, and we weren´t sure if it was a good idea to walk past the dogs... but we hiked on towards them anyway. Bad idea. As soon as we got to their hill, one of the dogs spied us, Rachel screamed, and then 5 large dogs FLEW across the pasture, through the fence, and were suddenly right in front of us, barking like they wanted to kill us. Rachel threw her stick away (that she was going to use to protect us), I yelled ¨NO!¨at the top of my lungs, and the dogs kind of stopped for a second at the sound of my yell. Then they decided they still wanted to eat us and started running towards us again. I screamed at them again, they finally decided I was a big, bad dangerous human not to be messed with, and they trotted back toward their cows. Meanwhile, Rachel and I tried to slowly walk away back up the path we´d come down on, which was a bit hard to do because my legs felt like jelly. So, um, lesson learned... don´t mess with dogs in Ecuador, at least the ones who have cows to guard. They will eat you.

On the way home from Papallacta Rachel and I hailed down a bus in the middle of the road, jumped on, and realized there were no seats available. We had to stand in the ailes for an hour as the bus driver drove like a maniac back to Quito. Just like the bus driver to Otavalo, this guy thought he was driving a race car. We were swerving around corners, I was convinced the bus was going to tip over and we´d all die, we were passing cars going the normal speed, and to us in our magic race car bus it seemed like the cars were driving at a snail´s pace. Rachel and I were bouncing all around the aile of the bus along with another woman who was carrying a newborn baby. I still don´t know why nobody got up for her and offered her their seat. We finally got to sit down after an hour for the rest of the ride back to Quito. Buses here are hit or miss. Too bad we have to take about 20 more bus rides during our trip here.

Ooookay... so back in Quito, we had a ¨ladie´s night¨at our Irish friend´s bar on Monday night... then we spent an hour the next morning trying to find a fax machine for Rachel so she could fax her job contract to her new employer. However, apparently there is only one fax machine in all of Quito. We went into about 20 internet-telephone places that had signs advertising fax machines, only to discover that they actually didn´t have a fax machine or their machine was ¨broken¨. When we finally found one, it cost Rachel $16 to fax her papers! Ridiculous. After she faxed her stuff, we finally had the chance to go up the TeleferiQo on Volcan Pinchincha to get a view of the entire Quito county. The TeleferiQo is a cable car system that takes you up the slopes of Pinchincha to the top. It has a really cheesy themepark at the base called VulQuano Park. Hehehaha. It was a ghost town, but with really terrible rap music filtering through the park. It took about 8 minutes to get to the top, where again it was kind of a ghost town and none of the 10 or so restaurants were open. But the views were amazing! It was really cool to be able to see where we were living in Quito in relation to the rest of the city and all the nearby towns. We could even see Cumbaya, the town in the neighboring valley to Quito. However, we didn´t have much time to spend there since we had to get back to class at 2pm

Last night, Juliet´s African dance instructor invited us to his house because he for some reason wanted to cook dinner for all of us. He is half Benin, half French, and so is fluent in French as well as Spanish. He cooked us a traditional meal from Benin, which was delicious, and then told us that he wanted us to help him become the first singing president of Benin in the 2011 elections. He wanted the help of me and Rachel specifically becuase we majored in political science and he figured we could help him learn political theory. He kissed our hands because he was so excited that we could help. He said in return for our help, he´d cook for us every night. After dinner we watched about 100 music videos from African-French artists, some from Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Algeria, and Benin. These videos are ones that we probably would have never seen in our lives if he hadn´t shown us! Definitely interesting. But also very confusing since they were all in French... too many languages at once! My brain was hurting. Then Revelejo (that´s really his name) forced me to dance some sort of dance called Zuklove to the music of a Colombian singer and suddenly we were all dancing in his room. I felt very silly because I don´t dance. But it was a fun night overall

Anyway, I doubt anyone has even read this far... this is all for me to remember my trip, too, so I don´t mind if you only skipped down to this last line

Tschuessi!
Kerri

I am stuck in the middle of a giant, day-long easter parade in old town Quito!
All the streets are packed with people, like sardines in a can, and then there are thousands of citizens dressed in purple, ku klux klan-type robes walking up and down the streets while marching bands play upbeat music. Then there are hundreds of men who have willingly beaten themselves with a poisonous plant on their backs (you can actually see hives on their skin from it), and who are wearing chains on their feet and have barbed wire around their heads and chests with blood all over, and they are carrying GIANT wooden crosses as they try to walk up and down the streets. Some of the crosses are literally as big as trees and there are a good 5 other men who have to help the designated Christ carry it up and down all the hills. It´s all a bit weird, kind of creepy, but definitely very interesting.

Among all the purple robed people, crosses, and marching bands, there are also a lot of people carrying dogs around like purses. Don´t quite understand that. Also, don´t forget the women and men shouting at us to buy umbrellas, hats, water, gum, sugared corn treats, and chips. It´s all so Easter-like.

After we´d seen enough of the parade and a good thousand purple robed people and 50 Christ´s, we decided it was time for lunch. Somehow we stumbled into a Hari Krishna temple while they were having their own religious celebration and started talking to a nice Hari Krishna guy from Colombia who told Rachel she had a good aura about her personality (I guess I don´t). He told us that if we so desired, we could sleep at their temple for free and medidate each morning at 3am. We ate vegetarian hamburgers with him while all the little Hari Krishna kids who lived at the temple giggled at our attempts at speaking Spanish. He asked me why I wasn´t talking as much, if maybe I didn´t know as much Spanish as Rachel. I started to respond, but one of the little girls who was listening to our conversation chimed in and said, ¨Because you can´t!¨ (speak Spanish). When kids start to make fun of my Spanish, it´s time to run. But he then tried to convince us to go to the jungle with him and other Hari Krishnas instead of going on the other tour we were hoping to book today through Sacha Ursay. I think it involves a lot of meditating and converting us into Hari Krishnas

Now we´re in an internet cafe while the men running this place are standing at the door watching the parade pass by. It´s been a good 3 hours already and this parade has no end in sight. They are probably wondering why we are not as excited to watch and would rather be on the computer.

This evening we´re going to go to another salsa lesson. Hopefully this time my instructor won´t be mute and unhelpful, like the one I had a couple days ago. I don´t know how to dance or count beats, but despite telling him I had two left feet he continued to twirl me around in circles without explaining anything at all. At one point he laughed at me but wouldn´t explain why. I´m beginning to notice a trend of people laughing at me here in Quito.

Last night we went to Vista Hermosa to eat dinner, a restaurant in Old Town that has an amazing view of the entire city. It was very fancy schmancy, and even had an elevator boy to take us up to our table on the roof top. However, as nice as the restaurant looked, the food was absolutely disgusting. Rachel and I got ¨chicken lasagna¨, but when it arrived we discovered that they´d decided to add layers of sandwich style ham meat in it in addition to the ground up chicken. Apparently ¨chicken lasagna¨means chicken AND ham. How stupid we were to not know. It was the worst tasting lasagna I´ve ever eaten in my life. However, the view of the city at night with all the churches lit up was absolutely beautiful, and our waiter wasn´t too bright and left 3 things off our check so we didn´t end up spending too much on our terrible meal after all. Plus, the warm wine was a nice drink in the cool weather.

After dinner, we walked around old town with Juliet and her friends and visited all the cathedrals. I´m guessing because of Semana Santa, they were all open to the public and lit up all night long. They were packed to the brim with people, but still very beautiful to see at night. One of the churches had bird noises blasting throughout the main hall... I guess they wanted to make us feel like we were in the jungle.

The night before, Rachel wasn´t feeling too well after her salsa instructor had spun her around and dipped her down one too many times, but we had made plans to go out and dance that night. I was still hoping to go out dancing so I called up Hannah, the girl from Berkeley who is here working for the English language newspaper that we were originally supposed to work with on our trip, The Ecuador Reporter. I went to a fun club with her and her international girlfriends (from Germany, Norway, and Austria) and we had a really fun night playing pool (very badly, however our opponents were equally terrible) and dancing a bit. It wasn´t so fun when punk music suddenly started to play and we found ourselves in the middle of a mosh pit, but let´s forget that part. Speaking of the Ecuador Reporter, we´ve met most of the people who either work for it or provide the financial backing for it. One of them is an Irish guy who runs a Vietnamese restaurant (Uncle Ho´s, delicious!) in Quito. That makes a lot of sense now, doesn´t it? He´s nice, though. Everyone here we meet is oddly connected to that paper. Is it a sign that we should work for them? Hm.... I think we will have had enough of Quito by the end of next week.

Anyway, time to push past the crowds, find the Ecovia (trolley), and make our way back to New Town in time for our salsa lessons. A visit to Papallacta, a nearby town with hot springs, is next on our list for the weekend. Looking forward to that

Last night, we ate rice, shredded carrots, and a mixture of broccoli and tuna from a can. I hate tuna. It doesn´t get any better than this. What kind of dinner is that?

On a happier note, Rachel and I are taking salsa dancing lessons 6 times this week and the next... private lessons for $5 an hour at one of the best places in La Mariscal. Hopefully we´ll master the dance by the time we get home

Today is no good. I already managed to lose my sunglasses after wearing them for just about a half hour, I am sunburned from Otavalo, and my stupid credit card company put a block on my card even though I already put a travel alert on it weeks ago. I cant pay for anything today, so I called the credit card company and I have been on hold for 35 minutes already just waiting to tell someone to please unblock my card. Even though it is their mistake. Grrrr!!!!

On another note, our Otavalo trip was really amazing. Minus our first bus ride to Otavalo. The bus driver thoguht he was a race car driver. He took hair pin curves at top speed and I swear at times we were only driving on two wheels. At the same time, this scary clown music was on top volume in the bus, like a sick soundtrack to our imminent death. Even though I was convinced we were going to die, I still found the confidence to make a video of our ride.

We got off the bus after 2 hours and went to Lago San Pablo, a beautiful lake at the base of Volcan Imbabura. We took a boat ride around and the weather was finally nice for once. Rich Ecuadorians often go to the lake for weekend trips. There were a few alpacas lounging around the lake, as well, soaking up the sun.

After the lake, we crowded into a bus to go to the Otavalo market. We had a 3 course lunch for $1.25 and then had 3 hours to browse the stalls at the market. I bought a few things, my most favorite purchase being an empanada filled with apples It started pouring rain, then stopped, then started again, then stopped. Everyone kept running for cover and the vendors were constantly covering and uncovering their goods with plastic tarps.

We crammed into another bus after our time at the market to go to a nearby waterfall, I think it is called Peguche. It was really beautiful. Our guide, Vincicio, then decided it would be a great idea to scale the almost vertical hillside next to the waterfall in the mud and pouring rain. I am not sure how we made it, but we got to the top. And then we kept going. There was a giant gorge with another waterfall, and at one point we crossed a 3 foot wide mud bridge that was the only thing between us and one waterfall on our right side and the other waterfall on our left. Vincicio was quite the gentleman, though, and helped all 5 of us girls every step of the way to make sure we didnt fall to our deaths. We continued our hike through the hills and I felt like what we were doing was actually bushwacking instead of hiking. We were soaking wet and covered in mud and sweat and at times it seemed like we were forging our own trail! The hike was really fun though, despite being one of the hardest and probably most dangerous I hike I have ever been on.

After our hike we crammed into yet another bus and again there were no seats left so we had to stand until we got to the base of the hill that Vinicio{s aunt lives on. Then we all climbed into the back of a pickup truck for the bounciest ride of our lives to the house we would be spending the night in. We stayed in an indigenous village in a house made of mud. Vinicios family lived there and I believe they farmed corn and raised chickens. We made dinner together in their kitchen and washed everything in the water that they had collected in buckets that were sitting out in the courtyard amongst the cow patties and, well, the cows themselves. We were worried we would get sick from the water and the dirty knives, etc... but we popped a pepto bismol and it was okay! Our dinner, which we ate on a mat on the floor (there is no table) consisted of potatoes, tomatoes, cheese, lettuce, and.... guinea pig! The entire guinea pig was cooked, feet, head, and all. The head is the best part, I hear. Its a special meal for weddings and other celebrations, I guess our visit is included in such important fiestas. The sad thing was that as Iris (a girl in our group) was helping to cut up the guinea pig to cook it, all of its little guinea pig friends were under the kitchen table squealing, like they knew what was happening to their friend. I guess they just roam free in the house, as do the other animals there including their 2 dogs, cat, chickens, turkey, and 2 GIANT cows that hang out in the house. We slept on beds that were basically wooden tables and I my hips were bruised in the morning! I was scared to go to the bathroom at night because you had to walk through the mud past the two giant cows in order to get to the outhouse... which, weirdly enough, was at their front gate and had holes in it so you could say hello to whoever was paying you a visit that day! Haha. All in all, though, staying at Vinicios aunts house was really amazing. The funny thing is, in our rugged, rural house... there was a TV and a CD player.

Vinicios aunt lives with her husband and their grandson, Luis, who is 9 years old. Luis really liked all of us girls and tagged along everywhere we went and was extremely interested in our digital cameras. He was so excited when I asked him if he wanted to take a picture with me. Whenever he was with his other little friends, though, they were all constantly whispering and conspiring in Quichua to sneak up on us and we had no idea what they were saying or laughing about. All the boys in this community wear their hair down their backs in very long braids, and in general they are a very, very short population! Even Vinicio himself commented on how short he was, and thought it was hilarious that Jonna and Iris, the two Dutch girls, were about twice his height. He was constantly making jokes about how that was so wrong. Hehe. In the morning when I was getting ready for the day, Vinicio and his uncle were mesmerized by the idea of contacts and watched me very intently as I put them in my eyes. His uncle just kept laughing and shaking his head as he watched me intently.

We took a hike around the community in the morning up towards Volcan Imbabura, again sloshing through the mud from the rain and dodging thousands of cow patties. Luis tagged along as Vinicio explained to us about the community and how there are actually never any tourists there besides us, the people he brings from Yanapuma. Along the way we passed some houses and entire families would pour out of these small houses and stare at us. The men always were the ones who were excited to come up to us and shake our hands and ask where we were from, and the women and girls stayed back and whispered and laughed to each other while pointing at us. Everyone was really friendly though and genuinely excited to hear about our lives. They asked us what crops we grew in our towns When we explained a bit more about what our modern lives were like, they told us that our lives must be so hard compared to theirs. The views as we walked around were incredible because we were on the slopes of Volcan Imbabura and so looking around us we could see Volcan Imbabura in front of us, Volcan Cotacachi behind us, and the beautiful green farming valley in between the two.

Later we said goodbye to our host family for the night and caught another truck down the hill. We hung out in the main town square for a bit while Vinicio tried to convince another guy with a truck to drive 5 white girls with giant backpacks to our next destination. We browsed around some stalls in the main square to see what food they were selling, and discovered that everyone was selling pig heads and fruit. Delicious. Then we hopped in the back of the random guys truck and made our way to Laguna Cotacachi, a deep, clear volcanic crater lake that is part of Cotacachi. The highest peak of Cotacachi, covered in snow, provided a nice background to the lake. We took a boat ride around the lake and saw its 2 islands up close. When we stopped the boat, we could see bubbles coming up from the bottom of the lake... the volcano is still active!

After another ride in the back of a truck, lunch at a hole in the wall place, two more bus rides, some unexplainable traffic on the curvy mountain road back to Quito, and a taxi ride back to La Floresta, we finally arrived back home. We were covered in mud and sweat, had been wearing the same clothes for two days, our bodies hurt, and all we wanted to do was take a shower, eat dinner, and pass out. Fun adventure we had, though

(I am happy to say that after 35 minutes on the phone someone finally answered at WaMu and told me that I can only put travel alerts on my card for 30 days. Yay. Means I have to put a new one on my card every month. So inefficient. I love banks.)

Anyhoo, back to Quito happenings. We are a bit annoyed with the food we get at Cecilias house because we are paying the same as another girl is for her host family, but she gets more food than us plus laundry. She gets soup, a main dish, and dessert for dinner each night whereas we only get enough food to fill half our plate and there are never any leftovers if we are still hungry. Cecilia only makes the bare minimum for everyone. Granted, dinner is not the main meal here in Ecuador, lunch is. But still, it is frustrating for us because we are always so hungry after dinner and we know other host families are different. Then to top it off, in the morning for breakfast all we get is a piece of dry, tasteless bread and the same guyaba marmalade every day. Plus fruit juice (which is great) and tea. But I cant survive on dry bread every morning. Rachel and I have complained to our Spanish teacher at Yanapuma, but we feel really awkward making any real complaint because it would be very obvious to Cecilia that it was us two who complained since everyone else has been at her house for a longer period of time and they havent complained yet. Plus our Spanish teacher just thinks we eat a lot and thinks it is kind of funny that we are like men. So instead of telling Yanapuma or Cecilia, we instead just went to the supermarket (which is called Supermaxi... hahahaheeheehee) and stocked up on fruits and snacks to supplement our breakfast bread. We snuck some instant oatmeal to breakfast today and ate it secretly from our tea cups. We are also going to go out to dinner more often to get bigger, second dinners... but unfortunately Cecilia still gets paid the same $13.50 per day regardless of if we eat her food or not. At least it is just another two weeks. We will be leaving Quito on the 28th to go on a 3 or 4 day trip to Tena in the jungle, and then well be going to the Galapagos as soon as we get back and then make our way south to Peru.

On another note, the music of Quito is also a bit annoying... especially when it wakes us up at 6am each morning. The neighborhood dogs bark constantly for about 3 hours straight starting at 6am, the indigenous people who live in Quito drive up and down the streets in our neighborhood in trucks filled with fruit and fish with a megaphone that blasts the same unintelligible phrase over and over again in a monotonous voice urging everyone to come out and buy their food, aaaand everyone else in our house gets up at like 7am and talks loudly and uses the bathroom which is right next to our room. Weeeee.

Oh yes, and guess what? The sun DOES exist in Quito. Yesterday it was hot and sunny and wonderful. Kind of intense, though. I am on the equator, apparently. Good to know. I was actually sweating as I walked around town all day... granted, I was also practically running from place to place trying to get everything done before class at 2pm. And everything was going wrong and I was a bit stressed out. But eh... then the rains came on cue at 3pm and washed all my worries away. Thunder, lightening, all the regulars came out to play. Today its sunny again but Ive finally learned my lesson and have my umbrella with me in my purse.

Ive been sneezing up a storm the past few mornings. I think I am allergic to Quito.

Toodle loo!