Monday, on Monday we had yet
another very long day on also yet again very little sleep. It has been a little
bit hard to a) keep up with sleep here and b) not feel a little sick or tired
due to altitude we are at but we are all trucking through it with positive
attitudes and fighting our headaches and lack of sleep so we are alert to experience
all that we possibly can while in Ecuador. Today is going to be a great day but
a rather long one! We woke up at had breakfast and celebrated Sarah’s birthday
over breakfast at 8am. After breakfast we were allowed 2 hours to go to the
market or go and explore a little more of Otavalo before we were leaving. The
market in Otavalo is very well commonly known for their many different objects and
the vast variety of traditional Ecuadorian objects. I bought a lot of pretty
things but had to stop myself because I knew it was just the first few days of
the trip and what If I were to find more in Cuenca or somewhere along our way
to Cuenca. (plus I don’t want a ton of more items in my luggage going home as I
had a lot even coming down…however without toiletries and without the gifts for
my family I guess I have a little more room.) At 11 am we loaded up the bus
with all of our belongs from our hotel in Hotel Otavalo and headed for about a
3 hour bus ride back to Cuenca. Along the way we made a few stops here and
there for local shops and for bathroom and lunch break, but the main stop we
made was to go see the Equator! AKA I GOT TO STAND ON BOTH SIDES OF THE
EQUATOR!!!! J It
was really cool to see and to experience since especially we are in the country
that literally means equator. We spent a great amount of time at the equator
and listened to a guy speak about the different times of year, the different stars
you can see and when and where as well as the differences in sun/moon rise and
fall. We took several pics as well as a pic of the whole group standing on both
sides ones head on one side next head on the other side and so on. (It was
really hot at the equator and we got a tad sunburned…who would have thunk? lol.)
After experiencing the equator we went back to the bus to continue on the road
all the way back to our hotel in hotel Quito to spend on last night in Quito. We
arrived in Quito around 3pm and then met up with a tour guide for a tour of
Quito…the tour lasted 3 hours it was so long and I think we experienced every
type of weather while on this tour! After the tour we then proceeded to Hotel
Quito to get our rooms and spend a little time relaxing and to get ready for
dinner. Since it was our last night with the Provost Jones and his wife, he
(meaning North Park) invited us as well as all the covenant missionaries in
Quito out for a very nice dinner. We listened and talked to them about their
adventures and their lives and plans for living in Ecuador. We all went around
the table of about 18 of us and said who we are, were we are from, how we are affiliated
with NPU/Covenant and so on and so on, it was a great time and our group really
bonded as we had a lot of time to talk as the “adults” at the other end were “charlaring”
(prob my fav Spanglish work I made up and love to use!...its charlar=to talk
and then the ing so its lit talking lol) (oh and for some reason they were
talking about karaoke and then I said it and they made fun of me for it bc I
know I say it wrong but that’s just how I grew up saying it lol..It lit is
brought up every day as karaoke is everywhere here! J) After we ate a very delicious
dinner we were surprised with a delicious dessert in celebration of ‘Sarah’s
birthday. We headed back to our hotel and got there around 10:30pm (aka the
longest 3 hour dinner ever! But it was good and it was paid for so that was
nice!) After we returned back to the hotel we said we had 30 min to use the internet to email and connect with
loved ones from home and then at 11pm we headed to the ultima piso de el hotel,
(the top level of the hotel) for even more celebration of Sarah’s birthday. While
up there we didn’t want to stay too long bc we thought that tom might be a long
day as we were heading to the jungle, however we ended up staying up there a
little later than planned as we had met a group of people from NYC who we were in
Ecuador for the climbing, and the adventurous stuff. After a while we decided
that we should go to bed so we all headed back to our rooms to sleep…though us
being girls we ended up staying up late talking about life, and getting to know
each other even better!
TUESDAY: Tuesday Jan 17th 2012, today was a day that
was not very exciting or adventurous as we spent most of our day on the bus. We
packed up all of our belongings and loaded them onto the bus with our new bus
driver JR who would be with us for the rest of the week. We loaded the bus and
knew that we had about an 8 hour drive ahead of us. (Man oh man were we on the
bus a lot this week…thank goodness for motion sickness drugs, as we most of us
got sick bc the roads here are very bumpy and windy as we are going up and down
hills. We must have climbed very high while on the bus because as we passed one
place we saw sunny, warm part of Ecuador and then we went a little further and
watched it snow and saw snow on the ground. (um I thought we left the snow in Chicago.)
We drove for a while and then stopped for lunch, where we experienced our first
time being discriminated against because we were white. They would not give us
the meal of the day at the discount rate as they said they only had a few of it
left and that we would have to get something else (AKA they thought we had
money and didn’t need to get the food of the day because we could afford to pay
a little more…aka our guides were not happy and went to talk to them,) We ended
up being able to get the lunch of the day and it was soup, rice, beef, vegetables
and juice for $2.50…QUE CHEVRE! (WOW) we got so much food for such a little
price! I love the prices here! I am even really rich here where as in the US I
am a poor college student who has about 2/3 jobs at a time! After lunch we went
back to the bus and drove the rest of the way to the SELVA!! (The jungle) it
was about another 4 hour drive so we passed our time, napping after already a
busy and long week, playing games, talking, and practicing our instruments that
we bought in Otavalo while Oscar played the guitar! Upon arriving to the jungle
(THE SELVA!! I LOVE THAT WORD) named COTOCOCHA we got off the bus and we walked through a path
in the woods to get the lodge. It was not a terrible hard walk…not like we were
about to exp tom…but all we kept thinking is how were we going to get our LARGE
and HEAVY suitcases down here as we could not roll them bc it was gravel, with
sticks, and trees everywhere. We got the lodge where we were greeted by Javier
who spoke to us in Spanish about our activities for the next few days, info about
the lodge and the cechua people. As we were sitting there listening to him we
saw guys carrying our bags on their backs and we felt bad bc we knew they were
HEAVE AND LARGE lol…after the info session we got our lodge key numbers and
headed to our cabanas were we had about an hour and half break to relax and
explore the lodge. (THE REST IS HARD TO EXPLAIN BUT PICS WILL BE TO COME AS
SOON AS THIS WEBSITE WILL LET ME PUT THEM UP FASTER!) Lauren, Marta y yo were
the farthest cabana but in the end it ended up being not such a bad thing as we
had the best view…the view of the rio (river) right outside our cabana. After a
little while we went to go find our other friends and when we found them we
found the lodge’s cat, which was very cute and would not leave us alone so we
played with it till dinner in 30 min. We had an amazing dinner with soup, rice
and meat with vegetables and then for dessert as a welcome we got lemon tea
with sugar. After dinner we played a large game of banana grams, TODO EN
ESPANOL! …(and for some reason I did way better at this in Spanish than I do in
English but maybe that’s bc all we do all day is study a bunch of vocab and
words were as in English we use mostly the same words every day!) it was great I
was coming up with some great big words. We finished playing the game around
10:30 pm and decided that it would be best to go to bed as we had a lot more
full days ahead of us! We grabbed our lanterns (THE LODGE IS ECO FRIENDLY AND
HAS NO ELECTRICITY EXCEPT AT THE MAIN PART…SO PEOPLE CAN CHARGE CMAERS AND SO
THEY CAN COOK!) one our way back to our cabana we looked up to the sky and saw
tons of stars! It was AMAIZNG! You can’t see that in Chicago! (such a good trip
so far esp. since we are doing a lot of diff things than we would have done in
Chicago…like star gazing, not being in class yet, hanging out with the best people
in the best adventures.) We got into bed and feel asleep right away in great anticipation
for tom!
UN BUEN DIA!
PICS TO COME! I HOPE SOON…AS IT IS
GREATLY SLOW TO UPLOAD THEM HERE RIGHT NOW!
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