Roadtrip to Peru- not many people do that, huh?

So we have made it safely to Peruvian soil. Lots of driving has been involved (and there is still more to come), but it really hasn't been that bad. I like roadtrips and brought a couple books to read, so I'm content. Our bus is quite nice- spacious, comfy seats, DVD player, big windows for a nice view of outside. I've noticed a little tension between people in the group. I think it's the close quarters :) That'll get you every time. We're going to a museum this morning, doing some more driving, and around 2, we'll reach our destination, which has a beach :) You can bet that's where I'll be spending my day. Oh, how exciting! Okay, well I'll give more of the Peruvian happenings at a later date (here's a little teaser: there was a mouse at one point. You're on the edge of your seat now, aren't you ;)   )-- it's time to go eat breakfast and then on the road again. 8 days!! Happy Wednesday.

Well, my blog won't end quite yet- my mom had the good idea that even if I have no internet access to report on my time in Peru, I should keep track of what I do in my journal, then when I get back to Wisconsin, give you all an update on what it was we did/ share pictures. So, that is the plan. 

I wandered around Cuenca this morning, taking pictures of some of the pretty buildings. Bought my host mom, sisters, and Jenni (our 19-year-old housekeeper-type girl--- super sweet) roses and my host dad and Mateo some candy. I think when I get home this afternoon, Carolina and I are going to a movie or to the mall or something. At 730 tonight, CEDEI is hosting a "Despedida"-- farewell dinner. There's going to be a slide show and speakers and food :) I feel like I'm graduating or something. 

13 days from now I will be on a plane or in an airport waiting to catch my next plane on my way home to good ol' Wisconsin. I admit I have never really appreciated the Cheese State until I came to Ecuador. Home sweet home :) 

Until next time...

The end is near...

I am officially DONE-ZO with my sophomore year of college! Oh, it feels wonderful. 

Now that I am able to think about things other than school and studying, goodness gracious, I leave Cuenca on Sunday. I feel the same way I did right before leaving the States to come to Ecuador. Like- Whoa, all the sudden it's here, and I'm not prepared for it. And I don't mean prepared as in all packed; I mean prepared as in mentally/ emotionally (though I'm not very in touch with my emotions). I don't know- I think it will be weird at first when I get back. I will have been here for almost 4 months- different culture, different people, different food... I apologize- I can't be too reflective; like I said-  not so in touch with my emotional side.

Anyway, we leave for Peru on Sunday. I'm so excited!! We're going all over Peru- lots of bus time, but I have a book, so I'm ready. Machu Picchu is going to be amazing and oh my goodness I can't wait. We're supposed to get some beach time, so maybe I'll be able to fix my goofy tan (one can only hope). I still have to pack- ick. I think I'll try to start tonight. I don't feel like I've bought a  lot, but I think it'll be rough. I'm not the greatest packer. We'll see though. 

Shoot, I'm sorry, but I haven't got much to say. My Ecuadorian adventures are drawing to a close, and I don't know if there will be any internet access to tell about some of my Peruvian adventures. 

Alrighty- I'm going to go home for some lunch. One of these days before I leave, my host sister Carolina is going to make this fantastic strawberry dessert. Woohoo!

hmmmm

Oh my goodness, it's already my last week in Cuenca. My, how time flies! Unfortunately, it's looking like it's going to be a rough week- lots of tests and presentations. It all starts this afternoon, and the storm doesn't end until Thursday afternoon. Much studying and preparing will be done, and little sleep will be had. Hopefully, it will be worth it. All that to say, no blog entries of any substance until probably Wednesday afternoon. This week may also mark the end of my blog- I surely cannot write about "my adventures in Ecuador" when I get back to the U.S. I don't know about internet availability in Peru (which we leave for on Sunday morning!! YAY!!!). Anyway, have a fantastic day.

Mi Familia Ecuatoriana

Last night we had a family photo shoot :) Meet my Ecuadorian family...

Picture #1: top row from left, Jenni (she lives with us and helps around the house), Mateo (3 years old, son of Viviana), Viviana. Bottom row from left: Carolina (holding the naughty dog, Odi), Oswaldo, Lia

Picture #2: Spot the Gringa... We look like family, right?

Picture #3: Las Reinas ("The Queens" ;)  )- all the ladies of the fam. Carolina refuses to smile in pictures- we told her to, but she won't.

Picture #4: My host parents and I. Mateo popped up behind the couch just as the picture was being taken.

Picture #5: The sisters (Carolina on my left and Viviana on my right)

A Feel for the Jungle

So you don't feel like you missed out on going to the jungle.... You can experience a canoe ride down the river from the comfort of your home!

You can also take part in a perilous jungle hike without leaving your chair!

Enjoy!

Cuenca's oddities

I have witnessed some STRANGE things while walking to and from school as of late… And it all happens on the same street- go figure. Last week, I walked by the old man from whom I bought my umbrella with his finger stuck all the way up his nose. I’m pretty sure I probably made a nasty face at that sight as I walked by. Mmmmmm- appetizing, I know. I wanted to go home and sanitize my umbrella immediately.

Then there was early this week: There was another old man (I’m beginning to see a trend here…) on the opposite side of the street chasing a pigeon. He then proceeded to CATCH one with his bare hands- no, you didn’t just read wrong- the old man caught a pigeon with his hands. I know. Crazy. But it gets better! He took the pigeon and began cuddling it up to his face and “embracing” the pigeon (if you can, in fact, embrace pigeons at all). Again, my facial expression was probably priceless. Where do these people come up with this stuff?!

The last incident occurred today on the way back to school after lunch. So there are countless street vendors with their carts all along my way to school. Usually the people watching them are women. Well, today I saw a mother and a teenage girl (presumably her daughter) sitting together by their cart. The daughter had a tweezers in hand and was tweezing apparently unwanted hair from the face of her mother- right out there in the open, on the sidewalk of the busy street. Obviously neither had any qualms about doing this for all to see. Maybe they both figured the general public would APPRECIATE seeing the mom get rid of those unsightly hairs. ;)

So- the moral of the story is if you find yourself walking down Benigno Malo (the street) in Cuenca, Ecuador at any point in your life, keep your eyes peeled; you just never quite know what you’re going to see.

p.s. I eat on average 3 apples a day. If “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”, then sickness is not even an option for me, right? One can only hope… I’m feeing pretty insightful today, can you tell? ;)

Amazon Jungle Escapades- Take 3

Nearly finished- this will be the last post about what we did.. there may be more of pictures though...

Sunday: We got to sleep until 730 that morning- wonderful sleep. Our room stayed fairly cool actually (compared to other people's)- we had a fan going all day/ night until the power shut down. From about midnight until 5AM, the power shut down on the boat. It got a little stuffy then, but I was so tired I was able to handle it. Sunday morning we went for a long canoe ride to another place we were going to hike. Hiked around a while. We built a shelter out of palm fronds with our bare hands, so that was pretty fun. Then we got back in the canoe- it was probably 11AM. Some people fished for a little while (there were only 2 fishing lines though and the bait- grubs- had to be found in the forest so there was a limited supply). I left the fishing to the others because I tend to get frustrated and impatient if I'm unable to catch anything (especially if there are bites). After a while of that (and no luck), we headed back to the boat. The Jungle Discovery was returning to its original place since we were heading home the next day. I think we had about an hour or hour and a half canoe ride there. During that time, I took my rubber boots off (yes- we got to wear rubber boots on every hike- pretty stylin'). I went to take my socks off and ended up launching one into the river somehow. Oops. Our guide asked if I wanted to go back to get it, but it was no big deal. I have left my mark on the Amazon (I think some people would call it littering, but it was completely unintentional...). I rolled my pants up to just below my knees and relaxed for our long canoe ride in the sun. It was perfect- it was breezy because we were moving and sunny and oh-so-wonderful. We got back to the boat, ate lunch, and then had a bunch of free time before the next activity (basket weaving!!). So I put on my swimming suit and some shorts and laid on the deck reading my book. It was then that I discovered the TERRIBLE tan line I'd gotten from the canoe-ride. My shins were bright red (burnt), and there was a very definite line right below my knee. Nice. Some people went swimming, but I wasn't too keen on doing that, as I'm not the best swimmer (I can stay afloat, but I'm not great) and the current was quite strong. Then it was time for basket weaving. Ha that was fun. Tim and I were basket weaving partners and our basket turned out okay. Our teacher was the head guide, and he wasn't too impressed with our basket, but it was our first time- what can we say? I believe it was after seeing our basket that he said that some people are born basket weavers, and some people are born basket cases. Obviously he meant we were the latter ;) We took a night hike that evening. Saw LOTS of bugs- BIG bugs. I wore a long-sleeve shirt so that I wouldn't get anymore bugbites on my arms, and I'm so glad I did. All the sudden, I felt something crawling up my arm- something large. I was afraid to look, so I peered down and out of the corner of my eye, all I saw was legs- long legs. I believe I jumped up and down frantically, flailing my arms about. (You just never know what could be "attacking" you in the jungle at night). It turned out to be a giant grasshopper. Our guide was right behind me and told me, in Spanish, that there was no reason for me to be afraid- it wouldn't have hurt me. Yes, I said, but it was HUGE. We saw some spiders, cockroaches, and other bugs. At one point, our guide had us extinguish all our flashlights and just stand there in the dark, listening. Not going to lie, I was a little scared something was going to come out and eat me. Thankfully, nothing did. That night when we got back to the boat, we had a farewell dinner- DELICIOUS, but what else did we expect. Oh, it was so sad everything was ending. 

Monday: We took the same way back that we took to the Jungle Discovery. In the beginning of the canoe ride, we stopped at this native woman's house/ farm- type thing, and she showed us what sorts of things she grew, etc. It was kind of interesting, but it was SUPER hot on Monday, so we weren't really wanting to be there. We had been blessed with amazing weather the whole trip- not too hot or rainy. After we left, we had our 3 hour canoe ride and got out at the same place we'd stopped on the way for lunch. The place without bathrooms. And I had to go to the bathroom before our 3 hour busride. Oh, I was so torn- did I really want to do that which I had vowed not to do or did I want to spend the 3-hour bumpy busride in a very uncomfortable state? I got clear directions on the best way to go about relieving oneself in the wild from my experienced group-mates. Then I wavered for 5 more minutes. I finally decided that I was going to do it. I could do it. I did do it. Sheesh. Big deal, huh? Anyway, from there on out, it was traveling until 9 that night. 3 hour busride and 2 planerides, with some lengthy layovers in between. 

That, my friends, was my jungle experience. I highly recommend it to everyone. 

Pictures to come later- they're taking forever to load.

Picture 1: The cylindrical thing hanging from the branch on the left side of the picture is a wasps' nest, as are the bulges on the trunk. They make a marching noise if disturbed. 

Picture 2: One of our guides, Eduardo (I think that was his name) in action. He explained that the tree he's next to was used for punishment- people were tied to the trunk and the pointy things sticking out obviously hurt them.

Picture 3: There were some good tree roots- I couldn't resist.

Picture 4: LARGE wolf spider- they're very aggressive, we were told. That was during our night hike.

Picture 5: Giant grasshopper, much like the one that was crawling on my arm.

Amazon Jungle Escapades- Take 2

Friday: We had to wake up SUPER early that morning- 530 AM. We took a canoe (actually the whole group was divided into 3 smaller groups that rode in 3 separate canoes with 3 different guides) to a clay lick. What is a clay lick? you may be asking. It is a "wall" of a certain type of clay that parrots, macaws, and other animals eat to neutralize the toxins of the plants they eat. There were tons of macaws there, so it was definitely worth it. On the way to/from the clay lick, we saw many other types of birds, some monkeys (!!! they were kind of far away in the trees, but you could still see them), and some dolphins swimming in the water. It was pretty awesome. We actually didn't see that many animals during the whole trip- they don't just saunter up to a group of 15 noisy people like it's no big deal. I knew we wouldn't see many, but it was still kind of a bummer that there were no anaconda or jaguar sightings ;) We went for a hike through the rain forest around mid-day: saw a tarantula (which was small by tarantula standards, but pretty darn big by spider standards), a big millipede, and a bunch of plants. We got our faces painted with the juice of a certain red berry. That evening we went piranha fishing. It was basically  just a line with a hook on it- no fishing poles. Our bait was raw chicken. I got a lot of bites, as did everyone else, but the only person that caught anything was Ramon, one of our guides; he caught three catfish. I'm pretty sure he's got a fair amount of experience. After the fishing, once it was dark, we went caiman "hunting"- it wasn't really hunting though- I likened it to deer shining, just on the river with caimans instead. (For those of you that don't know, caimans are like black alligators). We were supposed to look for red eyes shining out at us from the shore. I never saw anything, even when our guide would supposedly spot one and we'd get close (I'm still not too sure I believe he actually saw anything...). We did see a little porcupine swimming for dear life in the water. Oh, it was just so cute! He climbed up a tree that was half in the water, and everyone took pictures of it (or most everyone, because I didn't...). He was probably scared out of his mind. The stars were gorgeous that night, and there was heat lightening. So even though we didn't see much for caimans, we got a pretty spectacular show in the sky. 

Well, it turned out that the river was low and the Jungle Discovery got stuck on a sand bar. What luck! We needed a ton of rain in a short period of time if we wanted to be able to move as was planned.

Saturday: We got up fairly early (like 630) and ate breakfast. Our boat was still stuck, but it had rained quite hard the whole night, continuing into the morning. After breakfast, we were told that we would have 2 hours of free time (ideally to sleep) because it was still raining (and we were still stuck). So after the two hours (in which I slept and read my book), we went to a small village where the Cofan people live, and we went on another jungle trek. We had a native guide (from the village) in addition to our normal guide. When we returned, our boat had become un-stuck! Just think- it rained enough in 1 night/ half a day that we were able to get moving again. That afternoon we went to a different, larger Cofan village. The people there have a project with the protection/ conservation of turtles that live in the Amazon. They collect their eggs and raise the turtles until they are big enough to protect themselves. Without the help of these people, the turtle population was declining rapidly due to predation and other factors. So there was a big "turtle farm"- I think they had 3000 turtles in all. They also had a pet monkey! Got some pictures of that. We stayed there for a while, and on our return ride back to the Jungle Discovery, we got to enjoy the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time (which I also took pictures of). 

Last installment tomorrow-- maybe I'll do another after that of just pictures or videos; we'll see. Happy Wednesday.

Picture one: Green macaws at the clay lick

Picture two: The tarantula

Picture three: Courtney and I, all painted up. (It was a serious picture ;)   )

Picture four: This was part of the Cofan village we visited

Picture five: Sunset

Amazon Jungle Escapades- Take 1

Well, I have returned from the Amazon jungle relatively unscathed- I have about a bazillion bug bites all over my entire body (those mosquitos are intense- biting through 98.11% DEET bug spray and through my clothes) and some pretty crazy tanlines (hopefully I'll have a picture to put up at some point that one of my friends took of this super-conspicuous line on my shins). Five magnificent days filled with sweat, sunscreen, and bug spray (among other things, of course). One word summary of the trip: INCREDIBLE. I think I'll try to do a day-by-day summary of events because that's just easier. Depending on time and space, this take up a few blog entries.

Thursday: We had to be at the Cuenca airport at 700 AM. Our flight left around 8 or 830 [pause in typing to scratch 5 of the 700 bug bites on my arms ;) ]. From Cuenca, we flew to Quito and from Quito to Coca. Stepping off the plane in Coca was like entering a whole new world. It was hot, sticky, and super-humid--- a little taste of the weather for the next couple days. Our guides/ boat staff met us at the Coca airport, and from there we took a bus to the place we were supposed to board the "canoe" to take us to our hotel boat (or "flotel"). Let me clarify quickly the use of the word "canoe"-- these were long boats with benches and 2 motors on the back; we were not having to row down the river :) There was a minor mishap about 15 minutes after leaving the airport in Coca on our bus. Somehow-- nobody knows exactly what happened-- our bus and a taxi had a little run-in. Uh-oh. So there was some drama, but after much arguing and some local police involvement, everything worked out. (Good start to the trip, huh?) We had 3 hours on the bus, then when we reached the location of the canoe, we had lunch and after, boarded the canoe for our 3-hour canoe ride. We had to wear these excellent orange life jackets every time we got on the canoe, so that was pretty sweet. Anyway, it ended up being a pretty long day of traveling. The landscape was extremely different than that of Cuenca though, so it held my interest for the majority of the 3 hours (until the end of the boat ride when I didn't know if I was going to be able to make it because I had to go to the bathroom so bad. The only option at our lunch site was to go in the woods- au natural- and I refused to pop a squat and expose my booty to the bugs and God knows what else was out there. I am proud to report I did make it until we got to the "Jungle Discovery"- our home for the next 4 days). It was a pretty relaxing first night on board- had supper, found out the itinerary for the next day, and just hung out.

I think part of the reason this trip was so wonderful was because, yes, we were trekking through the Amazon rainforest each day, fishing for piranhas, sweating our butts off, and just doing other nature-y things, but we always returned to our luxurious hotel boat. (Maybe not so luxurious compared to Caribbean cruises and whatnot, but relatively speaking, it was pretty classy). There were two people to a room, and we had our own bathrooms. There were 3 decks: the first had the kitchen, a few rooms, and the dining room; the second was all rooms; and the third included the bar (which some people frequented maybe a little more than they should have), a few rooms, and a nice 'sitting area' type place with couches and chairs. Let me tell you about one of the best things about our boat: the food. Now, I know most of you are aware that my stomach dictates much of my happiness ;) so this was perfect. The food was absolutely incredible. Every meal consisted of three courses (soup or veggies for course #1, then the main dish, then dessert; obviously breakfast was a bit different- we got a plate of fruit, bread, then the main dish- usually with eggs), and every course was DELICIOUS. They even made us tasty snacks between meals. They took good care of us and our bellies. The crew was great as well- not only did they cook, they cleaned, drove the boat, and some were even our guides in the jungle; they did everything. 

Now, time for a few pictures, and tomorrow I'll tell about Friday.

Picture 1: Kate and myself in the lovely orange lifejackets on our canoe to the Jungle Discovery.

Picture 2: Our home for the weekend! Isn't she a beaut?!

I haven't really had much to say lately. Been studying till my brains are ready to fall out. I had a mid-term last Friday, one today, and one tomorrow. Whew- all worth 1/3 of my grade, so kind of a big deal :/ Two down, one to go, and I think the next one will be the hardest; it's for my Latin American Culture and Civilization class. I really enjoy the class and like my teacher a lot, but it's all history and all in Spanish which= hard to study . The test is mostly essay, so we'll see how it goes. I don't expect too much sleep tonight. 

But you know what? I just keep telling myself that when the tests are all over, I'm going to the jungle. That's right. It's finally here. We leave early Thursday morning for the AMAZON JUNGLE!!!!!! I'm mildly excited ;) Okay, super excited. We're coming back Monday, so that is five whole days of wonderful, humid, sticky, hot jungle time. 

When I get back, I've got less that 3 weeks left in Cuenca and then 13 days in Peru (it's been decided that we're leaving two days earlier for Peru than originally planned, so that's pretty sweet). Shoot, only like 5 weeks left until my grand return to the Cheese State. Time has flown, and I'm pretty sure it's only going to go even faster now. Honestly, I'm pretty ready to come home. I have had/ am having a blast, and this is definitely the opportunity of a lifetime (goodness, I will be able to say I lived in Ecuador for 4 months). My host family is great, classes are okay (....ha.... I still have 3 huge papers to write when I come back from the jungle, not to mention 3 finals... that's school though- only like 9 more years of it, no big deal ;)    ). Living in a completely different culture is something I highly recommend- it's definitely an eye-opener. I've learned a lot about other people and a lot about myself too. All that to say I will be ecstatic when I get home. 

Happy Tuesday!