Hiking the Ecuadorian Trails.

February 15-20, 2011



With the money we’ve raised from the movies we went around this week and painted 3 peoples houses who are families who are pretty poor and part of the foundation we work with because someone in their familiy has a disability. This is just one example of the type of community service we do in town.


Also its super hot and about everyday someone says, “lets go to the pool.” “lets go to the river,” “lets go to the waterfall.” Today finally we did go to the river and played and it was pretty fun.



Hiking the Ecuadorian Trails.
Februrary 22-23, 2011




Yesterday we went to Mono, a farm of the family way way way out in the campo where the cars don’t reach in the winter because of the mud. We went about half way in the car and then walked the other half by foot. Normally they say the mud is up to your knees and its extremely hard but luckily it hasn’t rained much in the past few days and the land was pretty dry. However, that didn’t make it easy. It took us about 2 ½ hours both there and back in swealtering heat. It reminded me of hiking the appalacian trails (with pack and all—however not as heavy this time) but the heat was extremely different. We subired (climbed up) and bajared (climbed down) and seguired derecho (continued straight). After arriving we ate a lot and took a trip to a small waterfall to shower after the long, sweaty hike. As I was saying being on the farm and picking food and eating it is so great and I def got my fair share of it this trip. This farm is a lot bigger than that of leyla’s with a lot more crops and land so traveling its pretty cool (however this time we were pretty tired from the hike to do much hiking of the property). Theres also a bunch of monkeys who live here but we didn’t get a chance to see them either this trip. They also have a pond with some fish right outside that they just walk to and theres dinner. We made a fogata (bon fire) and they were roasting some of the food (bananas, etc) and I mentioned that we needed marshmallows and they asked me “for what”… they’re always asking me to show them something from the US that we eat or do and I never know something cool to expose them too…I’ve def found it: s’mores. Next time we make a bon fire I’m going out and buying all the necessities and I’m going to blow their minds.

Lastly, we slept in tents (sweet!!) –indoors—(sweet!!) woke up bright and early the next day, ate some more and were off again to return home.
Today was Lisa’s birthday (she was a volunteer in the Leyla’s finca but shes kind of stuck around a lot longer than shed planned because its so great here) so after coming home we were off again (after lunch of course from food brought from the farm). We went to a nearby waterfall that I hadn’t yet been too. It was great. Super duper big (bigger than the one id been to in Costa Rica) and fairly close, def a place we can walk to when people come to visit me.



Tonight is her birthday party----don’t bother putting on make up…you face is going in the cake!!