Pilas

Since my last post…I am still living in Cumanda and have settled into the `city` life. Cumanda has about 6000 people so it is in no way a city, but it is a lot different than the campo. I still wake up to the sound of roosters crowing and pigs being slaughtered, but I also have the sounds of buses being fixed at the mechanic next door, huge chicken trucks passing and shaking my building, and drunken men playing volleyball in front of my house until the wee hours of the night. I am not going to lie though; my apartment is so much better than my concrete shack in the campo. I am not sick as frequently (probably because of the lack of asbestos and concrete) and there are almost no bugs. I do still have a few cockroaches and my cat killed a mouse the other day that got in somehow. (I am almost convinced that the cat himself brought it in alive and then lost it and had to re-hunt.) My closest friends in Cumanda (that I met when I was still living in Buenos Aires) live right across the street from me, so they are frequent visitors, and have a little following of kids that like to play Frisbee and color from time to time.

I am still working at the water company and have gotten quite a few projects done. I finished the proposal for the water bypass for Buenos Aires, it will cost around $15,000 so I doubt that they will be doing anything anytime soon. I finished the design and report for the community in the jungle and will be headed out there again within this next month to oversee some of the construction/changes that I suggested. I also fixed the chlorine system/dosage for the water of Cumanda, so now they are delivering chlorinated water 24 hours a day…I now technically drink potable water! I helped a small community above where I live start to chlorinate their water as well, so they will be receiving potable water soon too. I am currently working on an addition to the sewage system in Cumanda where a small neighborhood is not connected yet. I don`t like working with the sewage plans much, though, because all the pipes eventually lead straight to the river without any sort of treatment and no plans to start treating the water anytime in the future (This is the same river where I used to swim about 5 km downriver in Buenos Aires). Also we are currently going out to elementary schools in the community to show a video that the water company put together to teach the kids about water conservation and the water treatment process. We have visited five different schools and talked to over 300 kids. We even took a small group up to the water plant to show them firsthand how the water is treated. I think in the next couple of weeks we are going to meet with the presidents of each neighborhood in Cumanda to give the same presentation.

I also have become quite involved in a restaurant in Cumanda that just opened a couple months ago where my two close friends work. I started visiting to just hang out and then became more and more involved and now am basically their secretary helping them with the money matters. I go in the afternoons when I have nothing else to do and then end up staying until they close at night. I help serve food, make salads and juices, and balance the money, it’s pretty fun and I am meeting all kinds of people that come and eat. Most are normal, but there are also a lot of strange people with all kinds of strange beliefs. For example, there are two men, whom are vegetarians that come to eat. They will only eat with plastic spoons and disposable cups. Apparently they believe in witchcraft and spells. They think that people put spells on the utensils, cups, plates, etc. To avoid any spells, they have to wash their mouths out before and after eating, they take the cups with them to burn after the meal, and one will take a spoon with him and the other breaks his in half and leaves it on the plate. It`s kind of creepy. Ecuadorians in general have a lot of random beliefs. You can`t sweep the restaurant floor at night, only in the morning to sweep out the bad energy. There are also all kinds of vendors that come to sell different liquid concoctions that will bring more customers and drive out bad energy (and people actually buy these liquids). And they are really into incense for the energy as well. I guess there are three different scents of incense that help a business. All kinds of hocus pocus.

Anyways, in addition to helping with random things around the restaurant, I am helping them keep their money straight and teaching them to write down all their inputs and outputs and all that jazz. Currently the just sell the standard almuerzo (lunch: soup, rice with some sort of meat, little salad or cooked beans, and juice), tortillas, and milkshakes. In about a week though, they will start selling pizza. We wrote up a business type plan (nothing too intense, they wanted to have pizza and I said ok but let’s see if it will be profitable first), and I helped design a logo, and made business cards and menus. It is amazing how easy it is to do things here. If someone wants to open a restaurant, they just rent the space. If someone wants to make pizza, they just buy the oven. And that´s that.

One older man comes into the restaurant every night to eat soup. He finishes one bowl, says there is a hole in the bowl and then asks for another. He normally eats four bowls of soup every night. He is quite friendly, has lots of stories to tell, and works on a palm oil plantation. He invited us out to the farm last weekend. We went out early to milk the cows from the dairy where he helps maintain the pastures, and then we went to his palm oil plantation. It was pretty cool. The palm trees are huge and as you walk through the perfectly spaced forest of palm trees you seem tiny. The oil comes from a seed about the size of a walnut (a relatively flat walnut) that is red in color. The smash the seeds and the oils pour out. We walked through the forest, found his trusted donkey (which I rode for a while), and went out to see his rice. When we arrived, his cows, which had gotten loose, were munching away on his prize winning rice. I played cowboy and wrangled up all the cows and put them in their pen. After, we collected all kinds of fruits for juices in the restaurant and other random goodies from the farm. It was nice to be back in the campo.

Random Thoughts:

•  My cat started acting sluggish and his tail got swollen and he wouldn´t let me touch it. I took him to the vet and turns out he had a pretty nasty wound under all the fur. The vet thinks that another cat bit him and then the bite got infected. The vet drugged him and then pumped him full of antibiotics. He has recovered but now has a three inch chunk of tail with no fur. Poor guy. 
• I ate some bad street tortillas a couple weeks ago and vomited every single thing in my stomach (I think some stomach lining might have come up too), and then had diarrhea for about a week after. And with only six months left in PC, I finally joined the PCV club (PCVs will understand). 
• I still go to Buenos Aires three times a week for recycling and English classes. Not too many kids come anymore though and it is getting more and more difficult. 
• My hamster gave birth to six gummy bear looking babies. One died the first night but the other five made it through and are now full grown and in various homes. I`ll post some pictures soon, they are pretty crazy looking when they are tiny and bald. 
• A few weekends ago I planted a garden with the restaurant folks to grow vegetables for the restaurant. We planted all kinds of things, from veggies to fruits. Everything but the zucchini is sprouting. 
• I bring home bones and random meat scraps from the restaurant for my cat to eat. One day I forgot and when my cat realized I had nothing for him, he jumped out the window (I leave it open for him to get in and out when he wants), he came back about ten minutes later with a dead rat. He walked over to his food bowl, plopped it down, and then proceeded to eat his meal.

Hongos

Ok super sorry for the lack of updates…fail, I know.  Well the last update was right before I was about to go home to the states in the end of May.  Well I made it home and had a blast!  It was a whirlwind of traveling but I managed to see tons of my family and friends.  The first weekend I went out to Ohio to see most of the May family.  From there I went back to my sister and brother-in-law´s house to hang out with my adorable nephew, Will.  We had lots of Will time and ate lots of delicious food that I cannot get here.  I also made my way to Great Clips to cut my obnoxiously, long, crack-lady hair.  I donated to Locks of Love and got my hair cut for free…sweet.  After Indy I took my first (and probably last) MegaBus ride back to Chicago, was there for about a day and then got on a flight to New Orleans to see my other sister and brother-in-law.  I was greeted by an abundance of oysters, crawfish, and PoBoys.  We also got our fill of Abita Beer at the brewery.  After New Orleans, it was back to Chicago to hang out with my parents, brother and sister-in-law, and see friends that came in to visit.  Thanks to everyone that I saw and that visited and for everything…it was a great trip home! 

I got back to Guayaquil and was greeted by three friends that had come 2 hours by bus to meet me at the airport…it was a super nice greeting.  All but one of my animals in my menagerie survived during my time back in the States.  Before I left I had, three bunnies, two geese, and a cat.  The baby bunny was apparently ´gifted´ to a neighbor while I was home in the states…turns out his wife was sick with something random and the only cure was baby bunny soup.  Other than that though, they were all healthy and happy.  The geese now are looking more and more like ducks…pretty sure that I got swindled on that one.

I made my way to Mompiche Beach in Esmeraldas for the 4^th of July where a group of volunteers met up to celebrate the holiday.  The night of the 4^th we partied like true Americans with some Beer Olympics.  We also went to a really pretty black sand beach and played in the waves. 

A few weekends after that I went back to the beach at Puerto Lopez (where I went with my parents) to see the whales.  I went to Isla de la Plata again and saw some more boobies, blue footed and Nazca, and saw albatross.  The albatross were absolutely amazing.  The was one nesting right in the middle of the trail and two more were doing a mating dance that you would only see on National Geographic.  The guide told us that only about 6 of these endangered birds come to nest on the island every year…I saw three of them!  Since the albatross was sitting on an egg in the middle of the trail we tried to take a different way around, but failed, so I ended up basically jumping over this huge bird.  I heard that the next week when some other volunteers went to the island that the trail was closed because of the nesting albatross…I got lucky!  On the boat ride back from the island we saw a ton of whales.  I saw a mom with a calf, whales jumping, others that almost hit the boat, others waving, and a whole lot of blowhole spouting.  The next day we decided to go on another whale watching tour.  So I saw lots more, including two males that were fighting over a female, and others that were jumping and playing.  They are pretty amazing creatures.

When I got back to BA things got a little shady.  So Jefferson and Lopez, my old counterparts who I had a lot of trust in, are apparently upset and jealous that I am working with the water company outside of town and that I don’t spend every waking moment with them.  So because of that they decided that they would create some problems for me.  Nice guys right?  Well the house in BA where I lived was a government house.  Basically the government gifts houses to the people that are poor but that have a chunk of land to build a house.  So I kept it a secret that I was renting the house from my landlady.  However, Jefferson and Lopez knew that I was paying because they had helped me find the house.  Well my landlady comes over one afternoon and tells me that the government people know that I am renting the house and are going to take it away from her.  She said that it was written down that I was paying $60 a month for this house.  Well I was only paying $40 so clearly somebody had lied and made things up….Jefferson or Lopez.  Well long story short, I had to leave the house and there was nowhere else in Buenos Aires so I had to leave and move to Cumanda (the bigger town where I work at the water company about 5 km from BA).   I found a super nice apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom inside, tile floors, no cockroaches, no bats, no concrete dust, no asbestos, no ants, and no snakes.  It was definitely a bummer having to leave BA and the countryside to be in the ´big´city but that’s life.  The toughest thing I had to leave were all the kids that were always in and out of my house and my papaya tree!  But I still go to BA about 3-4 times a week for recycling, English, and just to hang out.  I have only been in this apartment for a week and a half so I don’t have too many friends yet, but I hope to wrangle up some children to play soccer and Frisbee with soon.

Other than that I have just been working at the water company.  Things are actually going pretty well.  I was doing a lot of mini-project proposals for replacement sewage pipes and was helping with routes for a database project that we are starting.  But now I have also started a project for BA.  They want to make a large bypass for their drinking water piping so I went out and took some GPS coordinates and will start drawing up the plans, calculations, and projected cost for that.

I also went to the jungle this past weekend with a fellow volunteer and engineer to visit another volunteer and to help her with her town´s water system.  They have a pretty sweet setup but are lacking a sedimentation basin, have some break-pressure tank issues, and need a chlorine drip system.  So we went out, were treated like real engineers, took measurements, talked with the guy in charge, and are now in the process of doing the plans and report to turn into the water board by the beginning of September.  It was mostly just a work trip, but her site is super beautiful and I plan to go back in a month or so to stay for a lot longer.

That is about it…sorry more informative than funny or interesting but here are some PICTURES:

 https://picasaweb.google.com/100931733724063278429/August142012?authkey=Gv1sRgCKb26oiL9ru54gE#

Random Thoughts:

·         I stepped on a coral snake walking up to my house in BA one night…I had teeth indents but no actually bite…it was a close call.

·         I have been swimming in the river a lot lately.  It is extremely polluted so I go on treasure hunts with the kids to find fun things in the trash.  I have found some useful things but normal items to find include: plastic bottles, diapers, cow carcasses, chicken parts, tomatoes and onions, and Styrofoam plates.  Recently, I found an injured dog that I rescued by forging the river with him on my shoulders (he was at least 40 pounds) and then the next day I found a dead dog stuck between some rocks.  I also have a weird skin fungus that I am pretty sure came from the river.

·         I bought two hamsters after all my bunnies died.  I made a make-shift cage out of wire that I had at the house.  Apparently I didn’t do a very good job because they escaped in the middle of the night.  I woke up to some rustling, and a squeak.  I turned on the light to see my cat sprinting out the window, hamster in tow.  The cat came back about five minutes later like nothing had happened and proceeded to clean his mouth.  I found the other hamster about a week later under my dresser.  He had made a nest out of concrete dust and hair and was hoarding cat food.

·         Most days I feel like I am living in a Telenovela.

·         I now have my geese/ducks living on the roof of my apartment building.  I bought them a nice big tub to bathe in and fenced in a corner where they can roam.

·         My cat gave me ring worm…again.

Nieve y Algodon

Four months…wow sorry it has been a very long time.  I promise that from now on I will keep this blog more up to date.  So last time I wrote was my parent´s visit, since then a lot has happened.  First and foremost, it has been rainy season.  This means lot of things.  It means that it pours almost every night and sometimes all day.  It means there are tons of random swimming holes, creeks, springs, and waterfalls that weren’t there during the dry season.  It means flooding.  And it means no running water.  So the kids were on vacations from the beginning of February through the start of April.  Thus, I went swimming with the kids almost on a daily basis in numerous different spots.  There are a ton of super cool spots to swim.  My favorite is a waterfall that is in the middle of dense jungle vegetation.  You have to hike back through quite a few different farms and then follow a stream in the forest until you can hear the waterfall…it is super pretty.  So with all the rain people are still working in the fields and harvesting random crops.  My phone actually broke by harvesting cacao in the middle of a downpour…whoops.  The rain has caused some flooding.  The grounds around the hostel in Buenos Aires got flooded and so did the entire lot of cacao that I planted with Pepito….bummer.  It took out Bucay´s intake structure for their tubed water (this is the water that we steal before it gets to the treatment plant).  Thus, I was completely without water for about a week.  I had to go to neighbor´s houses to ask for water to bathe with because they have hookups to Cumanda´s water.  After a week I got fed up with no water, so I tapped into the Cumanda water distribution network.  The hose just happened to run right by my house so I made a little connection and then duct taped all the random plastic hose pieces I could find around my house to get the water from the connection into my wash tank.  It doesn’t look pretty, but I can now fill up my wash tank to have water for the house.  This means still no running water but definitely better than no water whatsoever.  It has been about 2 months now like this, but the rainy season is supposed to be over soon so maybe I´ll get some running water again.

In the middle of March two of my friends from home, Eric and Rudy came to visit me for a week.  I went up to Quito to meet them at the airport and from there we headed to the Amazon and the city of Tena.  I took them out to the eco-tourism place with the monkeys on the beach where I had been before.  We actually spent the night at Kamak Maki in the middle of the forest.  We hung out with Lucas (the monkey that peed on me the visit before) and he caused quite a bit of mischief.  The boys had brought me some candy bars from the states, and Lucas decided to steal my last Snickers bar, pound it on the ground a bunch of times, eat a little bit, and then wipe his dirty little chocolate hands on my pants…that little jerk, but so darn adorable.  We went for a hike in the jungle and went to see a really pretty waterfall and then we went tubing down the Napo River.  We stayed in Tena that night and then went to check out the caves of Jumandy the next day.  After the jungle we headed down to my site.  We got to my house at night and were greeted by a pile of bat poop on the floor, cockroaches on the walls of the kitchen, and a baby tarantula in the kitchen sink.  Both of the ‘outdoorsy’ boys were immediately disgusted, freaked out, and I think genuinely scared that they had to sleep in my house for the next couple of nights.  It was pretty hilarious.  Over the next couple days we just trekked around Buenos Aires and Cumanda.  We visited the best swimming holes, ate lots of fruit, swung on some Tarzan vines, and just hung out with members of the community.  The last day a friend of mine took us about an hour outside of Cumanda where we repelled down a cliff off the dirt road to get to a super pretty waterfall.  The next day we went up to Riobamba to walk around and show them a little bit of the sierra.  And after that we went back up to Quito to see them off on the plane back to the states.  All in all it was a great visit with them and as usual Buenos Aires enjoyed seeing some more Gringos in town.

Ok, so workwise.  I am finally a real engineer here!  It just fell into my lap, but I am now working for the water company of Cumanda.  This is actually the same company that I am currently stealing my water from.  So I work there three mornings a week and I am their only technical person, which is awesome.  Basically that means I am in charge of any and all things AutoCAD, all the calculations, and checking of other calculations.  So the main project for the company is potable water and sewage system for all of Cumanda.  Most of the plans for this are already done, so I am just looking them over and doing other random sketches and calculations for that.  So that part is kind of cool, but the best thing is that all the little communities in the county of Cumanda who don’t have water, or who need help fixing their water supply can come into the office to ask for technical help.  Well, since I happen to be the only technical person that means me!  I get to go out and help all the little communities.  I have only been at the company for about a month, but I already have a project to help improve and update a system in a community of only 16 families.  So I am super content in that regard.  As far as other work in Buenos Aires goes…there isn’t all that much.  I started a big wormbed with the Escuela de Campo so we have some worms and some humus.  I have cooking classes every Friday (they just want to learn basic ‘American’ food, pizza, hamburgers, tacos, cookies, breads, etc.) and I am starting up English and recycling again at the school.  But really Buenos Aires doesn’t have all that much interest in me, so better that I focus my energy on the other little towns that actually want help with water.

Other than that, I have just been hanging around until I go home to visit!  I leave May 30th and I cannot wait.  It has been over year and it is time to get back for a little bit.  I will have pictures to post at some point in the future but no promises on that.  But I do promise to write more often…so stay tuned.  

Random Thoughts:
•    On Palm Sunday, I passed a catholic church on the way to the market.  The priest was outside blessing people with holy water.  The water was held in an empty vegetable lard tub and he was flicking the water with a paint brush.
•    Lycra (spandex) leggings in every neon color you can imagine are the hot fashion item here.  A woman wearing Lycra with wedge heels is what all the men want.
•    I put on black Lycra capris to go running one day.  Never again.  There were numerous comments about my beautiful ‘yuccas’ (my large thighs that remind them of the white tuber that they eat) and my curves.
•    I bought two bunnies on Easter.  One died a couple weeks later, so I bought two more.  I now have three bunnies.  I think I might be crazy.
•    I ate lots of Fanesca for Easter…a soup that has just about every grain, starch, bean, and vegetable that you can imagine in it.
•    I got super sick one week with strep throat…turns out they don´t sell Penicillin in Ecuador so I had to make due with a weaker alternative drug, that didn´t work.  A woman in town told me a home remedy and after a few days of gargling a mixture of chamomile, potato, lemon, and dragon´s blood I was all better.
•    During rainy season all the venomous snakes want to come into my dry house.  An old lady in town killed two large ´X´ snakes (I don´t know the English name but here they called them X snakes because the pattern on their back is like X´s) in front of my house, I half killed a coral snake in the hinge of my bathroom door, a man passed by my house dragging along a 5 foot long ´X´ snake to extract the lard, I found a dead ´X´ snake while swimming in the creek, and I almost killed a baby snake while walking to the store one day.  Oh and I saw a long neon green snake eating a tree frog in the banana trees behind my house one day…that was actually pretty cool.
•    I had my mid-service conference at the end of April…one year in site!  It was great to see everyone and learn some new stuff in the conference.  We also had our one year medical check-up; complete with stool samples…no parasites for me. 
•    It is the beginning on orange season….yes!
•    My cat gave me ringworm on my face.

It´s All About the Points

I celebrated Christmas Eve with my neighbors and some of their relatives.  We cooked a large meal and all just hung out and enjoyed each other’s company.  On Christmas Day, BA had a celebration for the kids.  They played games, brought in some clowns to paint faces and dance, had a creepy little kid pageant, and gifted toys and candies to all the kids in town.  It was fun to see how excited the kids were to run up and accept their new toy.  I left the celebration a little bit early to go to the airport in Guayaquil to meet my parents.  Their plane got in with no problems and it was GREAT to see them.  That night we got a shuttle to Guayaquil and stayed the night in a hotel with AC and hot water…glorious. 

The next morning we headed back to the airport to rent our car when my dad realized that he had left his super cool tourist hat (with a flap in back to prevent neck burn) in the hotel.  Well of course we couldn’t leave such a treasure behind, so we got in the car, stalled and sputtered our way out of the airport parking lot (just working out the stick shift kinks) and weaved our way through the busy streets of Guayaquil back to the hotel.  My parents stayed in the car double parked in front of the hotel while I ran in to get the hat that was supposed to be waiting at the desk for me.  Well, I got inside and the lady at the desk told me that they had not found the hat but that I could go upstairs and double check if I wanted to.  Thus, I was escorted upstairs and waited for a while for the head housekeeper lady to show up and let me in the room.  As she let me in, she told me that she had torn apart the room looking and had not found anything.  Well, I walked in, reached up on the shelf in the closet where my dad said that he had left the hat, and lo and behold found it.  Turns out that Ecuadorians are quite short and the shelves in the closets are quite high.  As I walked out of the elevator, my mom was walking into the lobby to tell me that my dad had just received a ticket for double parking and that I had to go talk with the police officer since he couldn’t speak a word of English.  I got outside, my dad had already driven off to ´go around the block´ and the officer was the next intersection down.  I chased down the cop, broke out my best whiny Ecuadorian voice, and asked what the problem was.  Turns out he just wanted my dad to move the car and had not given him a ticket, alas the language barrier.  So I went back to the hotel where my mom was waiting, gave her the scoop, and we waited for my dad to come around the block.  Well, we waited and waited and walked around looking for him parked somewhere and waited some more, and finally after about a half hour I made my way back into the lobby to beg to use their phone to call my cellphone which I had left in the car.  The hotel workers were quite amused that the crazy white girl was back again and when I said that I had lost my father, they were more than willing to let me use the phone.  My dad answered gruffly, telling me that there was no just driving around the block in Guayaquil and that he would be there in a few minutes.  We waited some more and then finally saw him coming and hopped in the car.  And that was how the trip in Ecuador began.  After that little snafu, we decided that my dad had lost quite a few points for forgetting his hat and thus the game of points during the trip began.  I of course had won quite a few points since I found the hat and made sure my dad didn’t get a ticket.  We also decided our roles for the trip, my dad: the driver, my mom: the tour director, and me: the translator.

We left Guayaquil and headed out to the good ole BA.  Because of the little holdup in Guayaquil we arrived a lot later than I had told my neighbors so they were quite worried but had a nice big meal waiting for us.  It was my parent’s first Ecuadorian meal and they liked it, but couldn´t finish because it was so much food.  After, we walked around and saw all the different plants and fruits that are growing right by my house, chatted, and hung out with people at my house.  The next morning my mom and I made lasagna to share with my neighbors and then we went into Bucay and Cumanda to show my parents around.  We got back just as the lunch was ready to come out of the oven and enjoyed delicious lasagna with my neighbors and another volunteer who came by to visit.  (The Ecuadorian men chose to eat it accompanied with rice.)  After, I took my parents around to meet my old host family (they were on their best behavior) and my friend Monica.  Everyone was super nice to my parents, but it was difficult to keep translating back and forth.  On our way back to the house we went through the park and I told the kids to follow because my parents had brought candy.  Within a few minutes, my house was surrounded by children waiting for candy; it was like trick-or-treat on Halloween.  Then, the family that lives one street over from my house showed up with a sloth hanging on a large branch.  Apparently Wilmur, the husband, had found the sloth out in the farm where he was working and had brought it home with him.  It was not a happy camper but I did end up touching it.  I asked them where they were going to let it go, and they informed me, only half-jokingly, that he was going to be dinner (I never did get a straight answer when I got back, if they had eaten it or not).

The following morning, Wednesday, we packed up our stuff, said goodbye to the BA, and headed off to Cuenca.  They were doing some road construction so the trip wasn´t as quick as it should have been, but it was still fairly painless.  We arrived in Cuenca just in time for lunch and parked where the guidebook told us there was a good restaurant…turns out the place had moved and the guidebook was out of date.  We wandered around for a while trying to find another place to eat and stumbled upon a place that another volunteer had recommended.  It was probably the best meal that I have had since being in Ecuador.  After lunch, we checked into the hotel, and then walked around Cuenca taking lots of pictures.  In the process there were a few incidents and forgotten items that called for some major point deductions.

The next morning we decided that we had seen enough of Cuenca and got back in the car to head to Riobamba.  We didn´t have a hotel booked so we wandered around Riobamba for a little bit deciding if we should stay or not when we found a travel/adventure guide that suggested a hotel and a lake that we should visit in the morning.  The hotel ended up being super nice.  We walked around Riobamba that night and saw their ´fabulous´ Christmas lights display.  They managed to turn a beautiful square with fountain and church into the most cheesy, commercialized light display ever, there was a blow-up doll nativity scene, a handful of Pooh Bears, Barneys, Mickeys and Minnies, some Smurfs, and a few Santas scattered throughout the square underneath strings and strings of neon flashing Christmas lights. 

On Friday morning we left Riobamba and got on the road to see Quilotoa Lake.  We were told that the lake was located off the highway a little bit but shouldn’t take more than an hour to get there.  Well that was a completely false statement.  Most of the way the road was narrow and gravel, curving up and down through mountains and valleys, and took a little under two hours.  It was super pretty scenery the whole way but we just wanted to get there already.  We finally got to the park, got out of the car, climbed down a path cut through rocks, and emerged in the middle of a crater.  It was gorgeous.  The lake had blue green water and was in the middle of absolutely nowhere and really was just a large hole where a crater had crashed millions of years ago.  I hiked a little further down the trail to get a little closer and on the way back realized that we were at a very high altitude.  We ate a nice lunch, and got back in the car to head up to Otavalo.  This drive took forever because we were in the middle of rush hour in Ecuador, which means a bunch of large, heavy trucks that go really slow and are hard to pass.  But we finally made it to Otavalo and the cute little hacienda where we were staying for the night.  We had a late dinner and then crashed.

We got up the next morning and explored the hacienda property; they had some gardens, some llamas, and a couple peacocks.  After, we drove up to Cotacachi, famous for its leather goods, and bought some fun leather stuff.  Next was the market in Otavalo.  It stretched for block after block and had tons of textiles, paintings, hats, and food.  We wandered around for a while and when we had had our fill we got back on the road to head to Quito.  On our way we kept getting stopped by boys or men dressed as women, blocking the roads with rope or dancing in the street and on the car, and asking for money.  We assumed it was something to do with New Year´s Eve (which was that night) but didn´t find out what until later in the trip.  (Turns out they were acting as the Old Year´s Widows who were asking for donations since the Old Year was gone.)  Thus, our drive in the middle of Old Town in Quito was quite stressful as we tried to find a parking garage and maneuver the one-way streets and steep hills, all the while trying to not run over the men in drag dancing all over our car.  After we got the car situation taken care of, we walked around beautiful old town for a while and then got in a taxi to head out to the newer part of town where there was a huge street party.  There were thousands and thousands of people walking up  and down blocks and blocks of this one street, there were food vendors, concerts, and floats/dolls (representing the Old Year) that were going to be burned at midnight.  After an hour or so we decided to head back to old town, and had a difficult time finding a cab back, as they didn’t want to drive through all the traffic and the men in drag.  Finally we got a nice guy to take us back and we stopped for dinner in a fancy hotel.  After the best salad ever, we headed back to our hotel to watch the New Year arrive from the balcony.  There was a family on the street below us that had made a bunch of old year dolls and were burning them, dancing, and drinking; it was fun to watch. 

On New Year´s Day first thing in the morning we changed hotels…the first one apparently had lumpy beds (I guess that doesn´t fly with the old folks), and checked into this super fancy little bed and breakfast type place.  We booked a cheaper room that had a narrow staircase, but when we got there they had apparently taken pity on us and we were upgraded to the fancy suite…awesome.  After, we walked around Quito and used the guide book to see all the sites.  We saw lots of churches, statues, old parks, and buildings.  We even decided to tour Ecuador’s equivalent to the White House.  It was nice inside but there were a ton of display cases showing all the random gifts that President Correa had been gifted by the various countries that kind of detracted from the fancy rooms.  We even got our picture taken and printed out for us as a complimentary ´hey you visited the palace´ remembrance.  We spent all day walking around and then decided to take a late afternoon rest in our little hotel and were then greeted by the other two couples that were staying there, after a long, mandatory conversation, I decided that I don´t like being a tourist.

The next day was Monday, and we left Quito and headed to the coast.  The first part of the trip was a breeze, the road had just been redone; it was four-lanes and quite an engineering feat as it wound its way down and out of the mountains.  Once we were out of the mountains and on the coast, we came to a fork in the road.  There was a sign pointing down a pothole covered road to our destination and a sign pointing down a brand new road to a town quite north and out of the way.  We chose the pothole road to our destination….wrong choice.  It was about 30-40 km through some hills of pure potholes and took almost 2 hours to make it through.  Once we got out of the worst of it, we stopped at a gas station to get some snacks for lunch (as our tour director was not pulling her weight by packing up some nice sandwiches to eat when the going got tough) and the attendant told me that we should have taken the other road.  Apparently even though it is out of the way a lot further north, it is still a lot quicker...so that explained why all the random people we saw in the little villages along the way looked at us like crazy aliens.  Right at dusk we finally made it to the beach and the little town of Puerto Lopez.  We had a nice seafood dinner, and then went to bed.

In the morning we went out to find a tour to take us to Isla de Plata.  We got lucky with a tour guide that actually worked for the Park Service of the island.  We took an hour boat ride out to the island and arrived in more or less a desert.  We began by hiking up a hill and a bunch of stairs to get to the main part of the island where all the paths break off.  We decided to take the trail to see the blue-footed boobies and the magnificent frigate birds.  We saw tons and tons of teenage and baby boobies and quite a few adult boobies too.  We heard the mating calls, the male boobies make a croaking sound, and the female boobies make more of a whistle.  We saw a bunch of single male boobies hanging out on a ledge that we dubbed the singles bar.  And we saw tons of frigate birds in nests that were learning to fly.  It was super cool to watch them try and take off, then soar around for a little bit, before heading back to the nest.  After a couple hours on the island, we headed back to the boat, ate some lunch, and then drove around to a cove to snorkel.  I had never really snorkeled before and it was awesome.  We saw angel fish, clown fish, tiger fish, some bigger fish that I don´t know the name of, and a ton of random smaller fish.  And there was lots of different colored coral.  It was super cool and they finally had to call me out of the water so that they could leave.  We took the boat ride back to the main land, showered, and then stuffed ourselves full of more seafood. 

In the morning, we made the trip back to Guayaquil.  Along the way we stopped for some delicious mangos (as it is mango season right now) and made it back around noon to turn the car in.  Then we got a shuttle back to the same hotel where we had had the hat snafu (I think they remembered me).  After, we walked around Guayaquil a little bit, and saw the iguana park.  It was packed with iguanas and pigeons, kind of a disgusting combination.  It was also home to the only wild squirrel that I have seen in Ecuador.  The Ecuadorians were not at all impressed by the iguanas but could not get enough of the squirrel…pretty entertaining.  For dinner we took a taxi out to a nice Italian restaurant and got our pictures taken because dad had ordered their famous seafood pasta…he even got a bib put on him. 

The next morning we just hung out in the hotel with American TV and WIFI…awesome.  We got a shuttle to the airport at noon, checked my parents bags, and then they walked me over to catch a bus to the terminal to head back to my site.  It was hard to say goodbye but it was a super fun trip and so great to see them.  Like everyone in my site kept saying over and over, hopefully they will come back and visit again!

Here are some pictures from BA around Christmas-time: https://picasaweb.google.com/100931733724063278429/Holidays?authkey=Gv1sRgCKKs-eiXusWfWw

And here are a ton of pictures from my parent´s visit: https://picasaweb.google.com/100931733724063278429/MomAndDadSVisit?authkey=Gv1sRgCMiKgdaH7OHOnwE