you still get sunburned when it's not sunny here

This morning I enjoyed a nice bit of adrenaline and hyperventilation to wake me up when I put my foot in my sock when getting dressed and discovered a large beetle had decided to sleep there. Fortunately life goes on and after our only decent breakfast at this hotel (a piece of papaya, two very small rolls, and probably three over medium eggs), we embarked on our first adventure. We walked down to the marina and got on a tiny little inflatable boat which took us out to a small yacht. We saw an iguana and lots of crabs and several types of birds in between the hotel and the yacht. We then went about minutes away to a tiny island where we saw sea lions (lobos marinos). They seemed to have mountain-goat-like abilities to climb up rocks, but noticeably less capable-looking bodies for climbing. Then we went to another island where we saw a pond (presumably with a connection to the ocean, although I didn't stand there looking for it because that particular viewpoint was mosquito central) where a shark lives. We didn't see it though; we think it was sleeping. We then walked across the island (through mud which was somewhat reminiscent of Puyo/the Amazon, but without the nice rubber boots) to a beach with lots of iguanas. They're such goofy looking animals, but they're really cool. You can also get quite close to them without them minding at all, so I got some nice up-close pictures. We also had a tiny bit of sun peek out which makes the water especially gorgeous.
Aside on the climate: SO HUMID. Also cloudy almost the whole time we were there, although it didn't rain too much. Not that it made a difference when it did rain, since we were already rather damp just from the air. The temperature was nice though; I like temperatures in the 70s and 80s, and at night it didn't get cold so we could still walk around in tank tops and shorts. People there also wore flip flops, which was so refreshing! We would have looked like tourists regardless of what we had worn, but in Quito people don't wear shorts or flip flops (they should; it's hot here), but on the coast and in the Galapagos they do :)
Anyway, the vegetation on this island was more like the vegetation on the island with the airport (Baltra): dry, lots of cacti, and weird brown grassy-stick things as ground cover. There were more bushes though, so it was greener in general.
We went back to the boat and took the sketchy little inflatable boat to a nearby shore. From there we walked to a small natural pool which was esentially dark blue water in between two cliffs. Swimming was cold but fun. All the rocks underwater were covered in moss, more or less, so they were pretty comfortable to sit on. There were entertaining little fish that thought that too, so we had a good chance to observe some (small) wildlife.
We then walked back to the hotel where were had a less-than-enjoyable lunch with something covered in peanut sauce. I ate lots of rice.
After lunch we had about 45 minutes to kill before heading to a beach, so we laid out by the pool. It turns out you can still get sunburned when it is completely cloudy, you're outside for about 20 minutes, and you're wearing some sunblock. As I've been told countless times here, the sun is very strong (El sol es muy fuerte, to be exact). Needless to say we put on lots and lots of sunblock and boarded the bus. After a nice 40 minute nap, we got to said beach which was gorgeous. We briefly looked at two pink flamingos (I guess they have shrimp here) and then we swam in the water, which was surprisingly warm. I hate cold water and I was comfortable the whole time. I haven't swum in the ocean in a long time, and I enjoyed the big waves the came occasionally.
In the evening, we walked around the town. It's not big and we got a good grasp of the location of everything very quickly, which is refreshing after living in Quito. It also felt much safer, although I was surprised at how few tourists there were; we still stood out and attracted a lot of attention. I would have thought that the locals were used to gringos, but I guess we're still novel.
There was a soccer (futbol) game happening while we were meandering and every store with a TV (there were a surprising number of flat screens) had a crowd of locals that were watching the game from their plastic chairs on the sidewalk (unless we walked by, in which case they watched us). I enjoyed this aspect of the town; it feels like a small community.
Aside: the TVs I'm sure are funded by the incredibly riduculous markup on prices, which, to be fair, are due to two things. First is the fact that everything has to come to the islands by boat or airplane; they're kind of remote and I'm sure it costs more to get stuff there. Second, they can charge whatever they want and tourists will pay because they don't know any better (or, in our case, they have no other options, since prices are much too high everywhere on the islands). A bottle of water costs 30 cents if you get it at a little tienda (store) in Quito, and here it cost anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar, and a package of crackers that should cost 45 cents cost a dollar always :( Oh well.
We bought yuca bread since we figured dinner probably wouldn't be too great, and I want to know how it's made. It's not incredibly flavorable (nothing here is except aji sauce) but I loved it.

bed time! I don't have service learning tomorrow though so I plan to write the rest then :)

galapagos day 1

This morning I got up at 6:30 so I could leave for the airport at 7:30, which apparently meant 7:15 to Gonzalo, who was giving me a ride, but fortunately I was ready. At the airport I had to buy a $10 card (like a credit card) which allowed me to go to the Galapagos. The guy at the ticket counter told us it was too early to check in and we should come back at 8:30. Our flight was for 9:45 and they clearly stated on the AeroGal website to get there 2 hours early for a flight to the Galapagos. We had a nice 45 minutes in the cafe and then got our tickets (no line!) and went through security. I had a razor in my backpack, Ali had aerosol bugspray, and nobody had to take off their coats or shoes. Needless to say it was the fastest security line I've got through. We then waited in the extremely large nation departures terminal (all of 4 gates haha). We took of on Ecuadorian time (aka late) and had a 35 minute flight to Guayaquil, and then an hour and a half flight to the Galapagos. There were very few clouds until we got to the Islands, and then there were lots of clouds. We landed on a totally barren island which had cactus trees, brown/red dirt and rocks, one runway, and a couple hangars, but no airport building. We boarded buses, went about 10 minutes down the road, and boarded little water-taxi boats to cross a channel in between the little island and the big island. We then boarded other buses and went 45 minutes, mostly down a perfectly straight road. We transitioned from desert to jungle, although the cacti remained, on our way to Puerto Apoyo. The town is actually quite large; there are lots of restaurants and little tourist kitchy shops. Lots of people ride bikes here, which is neat, and I have yet to see a yellow taxi.
Our hotel has a pool, and pool table and incredibly slow, but free, wi-fi. (I used my magic trick to fix Natalee's internet, which was satisfying.) We went to the Charles Darwin Research Center and saw little turtles and HUGE turtles. We could get right up next to them and take pictures with them :) I'm not going to put up any pictures until I get home, though, because my computer would probably explode from the effort. We saw Lonesome George, who is the only remaining turtle from Pinta Island, so he's the last of his particular species.

More tomorrow!
Love Alex

done with midterms (again)

Today I turned in my two papers and gave my two presentations. Since each class is an hour and a half and my class has 8 students and everyone gave a presentation in each class, I listened to a full 3 hours of boring presentations, mine included definitely. The second class is supposed to end at 4:45 but at 4:45 we still had two presentation to go! Some people talk fast/don't say much (think 5 minute presentations) and some people talk a lot (think 20 minutes, which is really long when they're supposed to be 8-10 minutes, I think.)
However, we made it out of class alive and only 20 minutes late. I don't have class for 5 days and I'm headed to the Galapagos tomorrow morning! (and headed to pack in about two minutes haha).
I went to the park after class to play ultimate. We played Hotbox which brought back fond memories of senior year lunch time, and then we played 3s, which is a lot of running but a lot of good disc time too. We finished about 5 minutes before it got dark and before it started to rain. This morning, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Weather here is weird.

I'm skipping our typical end-of-the-week and/or after-midterms going out in favor of relaxing at home and getting to bed early. I watched TV (aka the news) with Gonzalo for a while; my comprehension has definitely increased; I can understand a lot more of what they say now, which is super exciting :)

I''m bringing my laptop with me this weekend so hopefully I'll have internet and can share pictures of the Galapagos!

Love Alex

chavez y comida

I'm trying to be more diligent about updating this blog, even on relatively boring days. Feel free to not read if my non-weekend-adventures are less than exciting.

Today I woke up early after having a weird dream that a Professor Snape-like character had trapped me and some of my travel companions on the top story and roof of our house. Ecuador has had a bizarre effect on my dreams. It has also had a relatively positive effect on my sleep schedule; I got to bed at 9:30 normally, 10 at the latest, unless something strange happens (or a weekend happens). I'm then able to get at least 8 hours of sleep, which I love.

I spent all morning working on my Hugo Chavez paper. I'm now almost an expert on every Wikipedia article pertaining to the current Venezuelan government. Despite this, it took me about 4 hours to read and write 2.5 pages in Spanish and I still have half a page to go. On the plus side, my paper didn't have very many errors... plurality and gender concordance, I will win!

For lunch I actually had something with spices in it. Not that I'm complaining, I don't have a problem with the relative blandness of the food here, but still it was nice to walk into the kitchen and smell something strong and yummy. Our empleada (maid) comes Monday-Saturday and cleans, washes dishes, does laundry and cooks lunch. She's a good cook and I spend all morning looking forward to lunch, partially because it tastes really good and partially because something has happened to me lately and I always want to eat. Food is just so delicious. Hence I also try to go running in the park every day that I don't have service learning...

In school today we talked more about indicator phrases for the subjunctive and then we discussed a movie we watched last week, called Ratas, Ratones y Rateros. I hated it and would have walked out if I hadn't had to watch it for my grade. Apparently, it turns out that most Latin American movies are like this (no happy ending, bad guy doesn't get punished, everyone has lots of problems). On the plus side movies here cost between $3 and $6 in theatres, depending on the day and time, and you can buy good quality pirated movies (real movies almost don't exist here) for $1 to $3, so I'll probably stick with American movies dubbed in Spanish.

Im my other class we spent the full hour and a half talking about Latin American drug trade. Yesterday we talked about the Incan society and the arrival of the Spanish. I'm fairly sure we changed topics because someone asked a short question about cocaine in Latin America and my teacher decided we should discuss that instead of Indigenous cultures.

After school I went to Dan's host brother's school (his name is Beto) to talk about Ecuadorian schools. The most interesting thing I learned is that the person who gets the best grades from 8th to 11th grade gets to raise the flag every week their senior year of high school, and they might get a 50% discount for their university tuition, depending on where they enroll. Unfortunately that's the most I've written so far about the education here, so it's essay time!

Love Alex

life as of late

Most importantly, I fixed my internet all by myself. I'm not used to having to be my own tech support; that's what my wonderful friends and family are for :) However since you all aren't here, I've had to make do. I discovered that the power cord was the only problem with the internet, so I successfully found a Radioshack and bought an appropriate cable. Life is much much better now.
Last weekend I went to a recommended internet cafe called Mr. Bagel, which was amazing because apparently Ecuadorians don't eat bagels; I have yet to see any here other than this cafe, which is owned by an American. Needless to say, I enjoyed the bagels that I ate very much. I mention this because I (of course) had more internet problems: my laptop absolutely refused to connect to the internet. Because my tech-support experience is still in its infancy, I probably spent an hour exploring every single possible option under Network Connections, and finally discovered that my computer wasn't using the default IP or DNS server addresses, which fixed the problem.
Ive also had incredible difficulty uploading pictures on Facebook (my success rate is probably at 25 or 30%) but that's a less important aspect of getting technology to work...

On Sunday, I went running in the park and ran into Annie, which was a nice surprise given that Quito has almost 2 million people and I only know 14 of them well. I then joined my host mom for a breakfast of humitas and mango (two of my favorite foods here!) and then we went to mass, which I enjoyed a lot although I understood little because the acoustics were terrible. It was very short, only 30 minutes, so I had time to go superbowl-hamburger-veggie shopping before lunch. Sunday lunches are absolutely fabulous; my host mom's brother owns a restaurant (El Pajonal) and all sorts of extended family and friends come together and eat vast quantities of excellent food. Well, at least I eat vast quantities. I've pretty much established myself as the biiggest and fastest eater in the group of students I with. If someone doesn't want to finish their meal, they always ask me if I do haha
After this excellent meal of potato soup and bola soup, rice, lasagna, steak, bananas, salad, and mousse, I went to Dan and Beto's house for our Superbowl party. I could not have cared less about the Superbowl, but it was fun to hang out and eat lots more food. We had 15 people there, I think, and probably had enough food for 35 or 40. I've only been that full in my life once before, and I definitely did not eat much the following day.

As far as school goes, we have our new classes: Spanish 301, which is mainly grammar, and Spanish 322, which is Latin American Culture. They're both pretty interesting and I like them, except for the fact that they're an hour and a half instead of an hour. We have our midterms this Thursday (they're more like third-terms but we wanted them to be before our Carnival Break, which is 5 days long, this weekend). So, I have to write two 3-page papers and give two presentations, on the Ecuadorian Education System and Venezuela and Hugo Chavez. Since I haven't done much writing yet, I'm off to do that!

Love Alex

more amazon

The next day we headed to the nearby Quechua (indigenous) community. When we arrived the whole community was out on the big field with machetes, mowing the grass by hand. We talked with the Shaman, some artisan women, saw a traditional dance, watched an impressive volleyball game (in Ecuador the nets are a good two feet higher, and all the people are shorter, so it's pretty impressive to watch them play. We also played with their pet monkey and then had a lunch of an entire trout each, served on huge banana leaves. Jaime told us that if we didn't want the heads, he did because they are apparently the best part because the eyes are quite a delicacy. I ate mine; they were salty and squishy and I'm glad I tried them but I don't plan on eating a lot more of them. We canoed back to our cabins which was mildly terrifying since the canoes felt incredibly unstable, but our canoe-guide was very capable and we didn't tip over or encounter any dangerous animals.
Austin and I decided to do some more exploring on the far side of the river, so we got a machete (by we, I mean he) and we wandered around on some paths that led to what seemed like a farm and then more cabins. The farm was clearly not producing anything at the time we were there, so we looked at the variety of plants there. Banana leaves and stems, we discovered, are quite strong but they're really light because the stem is made of tiny compartments, presumably to hold water, instead of being solid. We swam/waded (it was only three feet deep max) back to our side of the river, and I was surprised at how strong the current was for looking so calm.
After it was dark, some of us went back to the indigenous community to either experience ayawaska, the hallucinogenic indigenous drink, or to watch the ceremony of administering the drink. I was most definitely in the later group. The experience was weird. Those that took the drink didn't really feel anything, and the ceremony was marred (in my opinion) by the excessive number of cigarettes the shaman smoked (think about 13 or 14 in an hour and a half). He incorporated the smoke in almost all parts of the ceremony but he also made interesting noises that were sort of like water and sort of like an airplane and used a plant that rattled.
The next morning I woke up at 6:30 from an unfortunate mixture of asphyxiation, claustrophobia and a bizarre but very strong pain in my shoulder due to the awkward mosquito net and the lack of a real mattress. I relaxed and read my book on a hammock for a while and they we packed up and headed to the monkey park, where Jaime normally works with his wife. Basically 40 or 50 monkeys have the run of a large space outdoors and some of the house that's on the property as well. Some of them were calm, some were rather aggressive (one ate Taylor's earring, for example, and another one almost escaped with my headband, but I won). Being able to hold them was SO COOL though; they're so cute and extremely capable; they can climb with any of their limbs or their tail, and they're fast. There were also use guinea pigs, i think, which were almost a foot long, parrots, and these weird sort of badger-type animals with long noses that turned up at the end.
We were then dropped off at the bus station in Puyo and headed back to Quito. I read (and finished) my only book, The Cider House Rules, which I'm still decided if I liked or not, but it was definitely interesting.
When I got home the power was out so I had to wait two hours to take a shower which felt like forever because the only thing I wanted was to become clean in hot water!
I did not get sick from this experience but I'm one of the few that was that lucky. Austin contracted some terrible fever and stomach problems on the last morning; Ali got something similar a few days later, and almost everyone got covered in bug bites (I only got 20 haha). All in all it was a fun couple of days that were beautiful and fascinating and make me glad to be back in Quito :)

Adventuring in the Amazon

The internet is still kaput at my house, so I ran to school this morning to work on my service learning journal and attend a service learning meeting at 10am. It turns out my meeting is at 10:45, so I have blog-writing time! Hopefully I will have a lot of this sort of time this week since we're just starting a new class this afternoon and we don’t have any midterms for a whole 8 class days!

Last Wednesday 12 out of our group of 15 packed up and headed to Puyo, Ecuador to visit the jungle. We took taxis to the south side of the city, which gets rapidly more sketchy after you pass the panecillo. The air quality also deteriorates significantly, which is saying something because air here is absolutely horrible. Buses spew out clouds of black smoke every time they accelerate, which is frequently, because they stop on the side of the road for anyone who wants to ride, you just have to flag it down like a taxi. Anyway, we managed to pay $8 for a 35 minute taxi-ride (bad traffic, for Quito at least). One guy wanted to charge us $15 for the same ride. We said thanks but no.
The bus station is crazy, it's a really large, nice building, rather like an airport, but there are rows of little booths where you can buy tickets for pretty much any location in Quito. The people working in the booths yell out to you enthusiastically with the list of destinations their bus goes; even though I feel like all travelers probably have a destination in mind already.
We bought our tickets and visited their version of a food court; upstairs, there are lots of little stores which are literally overflowing with all manner of packaged foods and breads, and downstairs, there are several slightly larger booth/restaurants where the salespeople all serve the same thing and all also yell at you to buy their plate of chicken and rice instead of someone else’s.
After a fair amount of confusing as to what time the bus left, where the bus left, who had the bus ticket, and other problems associated with having 12 opinionated people all trying to lead the group, we successfully boarded a bus to Puyo.
Salespeople come on the bus before it leaves and try to sell trinkets or food. One guy made a great choice coming onto our bus and selling cheap little LED key chains because many of us bought one since we didn't have flashlights and we were going to the jungle. Mine broke after two days but I popped it open and fixed the circuit (physics 122, I didn't even need you! ha!) and now it works again :)

After 4.5 hours we got to Puyo and checked in to our hotel, which supposedly had a large snake and a pool, but I was only worried about my bed since we had to be packed and ready to go at 8:30 the next morning. We were actually ready at more like 9, but it all worked out. The Madre Selva tour company picked us up and we went to their nearby headquarters where Austin turned over the second half of our payments ($120 for 3 days and 3 nights, per person) and did not have to sign a single document regarding liability or release.

Then we headed to activity #1, rafting on the Rio Pastaza (Pataza River). Several very entertaining tour guides explained to us what to do in case of piranhas, falling out, capsizing, etc. We all got very attractive helmets and life jackets and embarked. I think it was a class 3 river, so it wasn't as flat as a pool (normally) but there were no waterfalls either. We got soaking wet, but I avoided fall in and getting pushed in. Not everyone was so lucky. I think next time I might choose a slightly more difficult river, but I had lots of fun, and no one was injured or eaten, which is always a plus.

We all loaded the van and headed into town for lunch at a restaurant where they served very yummy food, except for the soup which was normal Ecuadorian soup plus a hunk of monkey (they claimed, but I don't believe them) on a large bone. weird.

We were passed on to another tour guide, Frankie, for our cavern expedition. We drove into the forest and up a mountain for about 40 minutes and got dropped off at this random little concrete structure. It surprised me how much trash and construction materials we saw in the jungle over all the place. We found tons of pop bottles and plastic bags and there were also a lot of dump trucks, back hoes, etc near the river doing some sort of excavation. We weren’t far from Puyo, but the concept of environmental preservation seems pretty limited here.

We followed our tour guide and a trail through the forest, stopping when he told us about certain plants. One tree, for example seemed to bleed when you cut it; they called it “sangre de drago” (dragon's blood), and if you took a small amount of the liquid and rubbed it in your palm, it turned into a lotion which he said was good for our skin and for mosquito bites. We saw a giant worm, literally three feet long, swimming through the puddles in the pathway, but that was about it as far as the animals went. I wasn't surprised though; we were really noisy and not that far into the jungle. The trail quality got progressively worse as we went on (road to gravel path to dirt path to mud) but we had our amazing rubber boots. There was also a tarzan swing (large vine hanging from a tree) which was lots of fun.

The caverns themselves were not particularly enjoyable for me. I've seen caves before that have higher ceilings, fewer spiders and less bat poop, so I didn't stay in very long. I didn't mind, though; I liked the forest a lot. We hiked back and got picked up by another bus which delivered us to our tour guide's house again to pick up our stuff and a new tour guide, Jaime, and then we got on another bus (by bus I mean 12 or 15 seat van) and drove a rather uncomfortable hour to the cabanas (=cabins, I think), our home for the next three days. The road itself didn't quite reach them, so we had to walk about 200 m (lucky for us, we had our $1 flashlights!). I must have explained that 200 m is twice the straight side of a high school track at least 4 times; it's a little strange to be with non-mathematically-inclined people haha.

Living in the cabanas was definitely not like living in a 4 star, or even 2 star hotel, but I really enjoyed it. The living cabins were elevated one story, on stilts, in case the river rose significantly. They had bunk beds, no electricity, mattresses that were definitely less than 2 inches thick, sheets and a blanket, and mosquito nets (the effectiveness of these particular nets is debatable depending on who you talk to in our group; I sustained few bites, but not everyone was so lucky). The net was oddly positioned on my bed: it hung from the center, rather than over on end, so that regardless of the direction I slept, the net wouldn't be suspended over my face; it merely covered it, making breathing somewhat uncomfortable. I used my backpack the second and third nights to prop up the net some.

The cabins had hammocks underneath them. There was also a fire pit with a cabin roof but no walls (and no ventilation) and a kitchen (that had electricity so luckily we could charge our cameras!) with tables under an extended roof. There were also two flush toilets, two cold showers, and one sink. The water disposal from said sink consisted of a 4-foot-long pipe which opened onto the ground behind the sink.. That's it. I assume that the showers had similar plumbing and I hope the toilets had a slightly more sophisticated system but I did not investigate.

We had a late dinner (9:30, probably) and I went to bed.

The next morning we got up pretty early and did more jungle-walking. On our way to the trail head, we wove sweet headbands out of a stem from a plant which perfectly separated into long thin weaveable fibers.

We followed the actual trail for about 5 minutes before fording a small river and turning sharply uphill on a rather less-traveled pathway. Jaime seemed to know what he was doing so we went along with him. After a long long time (1.5 hours, maybe?) we reached a small river where we changed into our swimsuits, but kept our boots on. We walked up the river (up to our thighs) about 30 m, and then we put our stuff on the rocks next to the river. Jaime handed us hunks of light brown, damp, clay and we covered ourselves in it (apparently it is also good for the skin, which I actually believed this time; it felt like a great exfoliant). We then looked considerably more tan, although still like gringos, and swan 15 m around a bend to a really cool little waterfall and pool. There was a vertical log which you could jump off of, and you could sit behind the waterfall. The pictures from this aren't that great, since it was rainy so the flash showed the raindrops and no flash was blurry, but they're decent enough to give you an idea. We played for a long time and then returned to our stuff, reapplied lots of bug spray, and continued on (through similar and then impossible pathways) to a second, much larger, waterfall. I'd had enough swimming so I just climbed on the rocks some and then headed back to the trail head, since we had a nice easy trail to follow again. We lunched at the cabanas and went to see the “mirador” (a viewpoint), which was a few kilometers down the road (we got a ride in the back of a pickup, which seems to be the standard method for transporting people here) and then up a pretty steep staircase.

The view was absolutely incredible. The Rio Pastaza was the central feature, with jungle on either side and mountains in the distance. We enjoyed the hammocks placed as to perfectly take in the view for quite a while. There was also another (much better) Tarzan swing, which went out over a steep drop-off, with the entire view in the background. Jaime was indulgent enough to let us do this again and again, much to our delight. He also showed us a cerbatana (blow gun) that some indigenous people here use for hunting. It's about 3 m long and hunters can shoot darts up to 30 m, I believe, to kill animals such as monkeys (who are not stationary, like our wood monkey target was). Also, when we were in the forest, he showed us the tree that has the bark which can be prepared in a certain way to produce the muscle relaxant that they use for the darts. I enjoyed learning about this because for part of my final exam, I wrote a paper and did a presentation on the Waurani, an indigenous group that uses cerbatanas for hunting.

We eventually stopped alternating between being lazy and being adrenaline junkies and headed to a local indigenous town center, for lack of a better word. There was a bar/artisan store, a soccer field, and swimming pool (large square hole dug in the ground) and pretty much nothing else. There weren't any houses or other businesses, but there were a bunch of people who started playing soccer, so a few of the kids in our group joined in for a while.

Jaime told us that it was a nice 20 minute walk back to the cabanas, and he was right about the nice part, but we learned that his judge of distances and times pretty much need to be doubled, at least. We did eventually make it back to the cabanas though, and the walk was particularly enjoyable because the moon was almost full and incredibly bright (all three nights we were there). At 10 or 11 at night, if there were no clouds, you could literally read by the moonlight.

more to follow!