AMAZON PICTURES!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2343695&id=9031237&l=94a6b9f160

Warning: they're on Facebook, so if my captions or friends' comments are inappropriate I apologize. Will not change them however.

Back to business.

Officially past the halfway mark.

Various things I miss: my car, real milk, walking around without getting stared at, my UConn library, a real cell phone plan versus having to buy credit that gets used up unbelievably fast, and good reliable internet.

Things I love about Quito and Ecuador in general:

- Buses. The buses are hilarious. There are three lines that go North-South, have set stops and separate lanes like trolleys. These can be convenient when the city is gridlocked from 5-7 p.m., but they are usually really crowded and harbor more pickpockets. The other buses have set routes but they only stop if you flag them down like a taxi, and you have to yell to the driver when you want to get off and hope they feel like stopping. People are always hopping on and off selling snacks, lottery tickets, candy, CDs, etc. I love the bus.

- Parque Metropolitano. This park used to be an hacienda (ranch) in northeast Quito, on a hill a few blocks from my house. It reminds me of Mansfield Hollow without the water. It's bigger than Central Park, with hundreds of paths crisscrossing through a eucalyptus forest and great views of the city. My friend Amelia and I "run" there on the weekends, usually get our butts kicked by the altitude and end up walking instead. It's easy to forget you're in a huge capital city. There are even people who live in a small community there because they lived on the hacienda, so it's not weird to see a herd of alpacas walking around.

- Talking to cab drivers. Most of them think I'm hilarious =)

- Chifles (plantain chips), 10 cent BonIce (similar to Flavor Ice pops), tostado (roasted corn snack), avocados with everything, popcorn in soup (instead of crackers..try it, it's good!), fresh fruit and juice, plantains in every form possible, $3 lunches that include soup, a main dish, juice, and dessert, shwarma, colada morada and guaguas de pan: a delicious thick cider-type drink made with pineapple, blackberries, and a bunch of other fruit made during October, especially for Día de Difuntos on November 2nd. Guaguas de pan are sweet doll-shaped bread.

- Night Life. Trying to explain our U.S./CT nightlife is always funny..because here when they go out, they go to discotecas or salsa bars to DANCE. Trying to explain what we do at home.
"Well we usually just go to parties at peoples houses..and kind of hang around and play drinking games..I swear it's not as boring as it sounds...sometimes we dance..but to hip hop..."
**Confused look** "How do you dance to THAT?!"
I love going out here although I miss a good house party now and then. It is a lot of fun to go out dancing because everyone has a good time. If I had a dollar for every time a guy told me he could teach me to dance salsa..let's just say I'd be riding the bus for free for a very long time. And no, I can't do it. Always fun to try however, and to watch the crazy Latinos doing what they do best.

- Seeing someone in the street or at the bar who I know - gringo or ecua, I get so excited!

- Picking up slang & dialect words

- Learning random things in class then observing them in action in the streets

- Having five dollars in my pocket and knowi ng I can eat and get where I need to go without a problem. It's funny how cheap we've all gotten here, like "Hey, do you have that quarter you owe me?" This is why I haven't sent any post cards - $2 goes a long way. Unless of course you're buying technology or clothing. If it's not alpaca, it's imported.


I got reproached by a few readers since it's been a week or two but like I've said before, I got STUFF to do! We stayed in Quito the past two weekends, went out a lot, shopped, did some homework...nothing too crazy. One day a few friends and I went to Cotopaxi National Park, about an hour away (or three if you don't ask the driver to stop at the right place and have to take a bus back to where you're supposed to go..oops!) home to the biggest active volcano in the world. We hired a guide to take us through the surrounding park to Cotopaxi then hiked up to the refuge at 4800 meters, almost 16,000 feet. The weather was changing like crazy, from rain and hail as we were driving, to clouds then sun as we climbed up. When the clouds cleared the view of the summit was really, really cool. If you want to summit, you have to spend part of the night in the refuge, leave at midnight and climb with ice picks and other crazy gear. It was nice to get out of the city for a day and wear my $2.50 wool hat from the artisan market in Quito =)

This week: Amelia (also repping CT) turns 21, followed by a trip to the Galapagos. I'm a tiny bit disappointed to be missing an overnight field trip with my Andean culture class to a shaman ceremony..but Galapagos trumps all.

Amazon Trail

Back from the Oriente..alive!

Friday morning we hopped on a 30 minute flight to Coca, which is a gateway town to the Amazon region. From the window of the plane I got my first view of the rain forest. It was incredible; I've never seen such a vast stretch of untouched land before.

The climate was drastically different as soon as we landed in Coca - around 80 degrees and extremely humid. My friend from Alabama felt right at home. We took a 10 minute bus ride to a hotel on the Napo River where our first boat was taking off. As we were loading up into our narrow, open-sided motorboat with two rows of chairs, I got a glimpse of a river dolphin! It wasn't pink sadly but it was really cool. We were on that boat for two hours heading down the Napo, which feeds from the Amazon River. It was a relaxing, breezy ride with jungle on both sides and the occasional canoe or group of people on shore who would wave.

We arrived at the entrance to Block 16, controlled by the Repsol petroleum company. Here we had to pass through a security check then board a chiva bus (not the discoteca kind) for two more hours. From there, we got into a second boat on the Tiputini river, which is about the size of the Shetucket or Willimantic River but murky brown and with a much faster current. Two hours downstream, and we arrived at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station run by Universidad de San Francisco de Quito, with which IES is associated.

The station is very basic. The dock leads up the riverbank to a kitchen attached to an open dining area, and a series of paths from there lead to an air-conditioned library/lab building and further to the little cabins we stayed in. The electricity is run by a gas generator so they only use it for two 3-hour periods each day, except the library which always has power. The water comes from the river and goes through a purification system so it's all potable.

We got to Tiputini in time for dinner then listened to a presentation about wildlife in Yasuni reserve. The station has a series of cameras throughout the jungle that are activated by heat and motion sensors, so the researchers can track different animals. It was really cool to see the wildlife that was surrounding the station, especially the really evasive animals like deer species and wild dog. Out of 20,000 photos some species were only caught once or twice. We were all exhausted and ready for bed at 9:30 when the electricity turned off. We were 6 hours deep into the jungle, and it was awesome.

Saturday breakfast was at 6:30 am. Then we put on our big rubber jungle boots and grouped up with guides to head out. My group hiked with our guide, Ramiro, to bridges way up above the canopy. We had to wear harnesses because the bridges were pretty rickety (built by BU researchers, so we trusted them anyway!) As soon as we got to the top, we saw two scarlet macaws fly by. That was when I realized I was IN the Amazon. They're bright red parrots with colorful tails and always travel in pairs, and are really amazing to see next to all the green. One of the platforms connecting the bridges had an aluminum ladder up to a higher platform. This was a scary climb, especially in clumsy boots when the ladder got shaky near the top. It was worth it though, especially because some yellow parrots camped out on top for a while. This was precisely the moment when my camera stopped working! I was so mad - really, you break now??? It ended up being nice to not have to worry about taking pictures all day and just enjoy looking around, but I'm disappointed I have to steal my friends' photos instead. Anyway, the canopy was awesome aside from the vicious little ants that kept biting us.

After that we hiked further with Ramiro, and saw another pair of macaws much closer. They were definitely my favorite animal of the trip. Ramiro was so smart, and kept coming out with crazy animal sounds. We saw three species of monkeys, and got to watch them climb around the trees. It's WAY cool to see them doing their thing in the wild. We saw peccary and tapir tracks, and some intense insects like military ants that followed one another in a perfect line, a huge centipede, and these nasty flies that bite you and lay their eggs under your skin..seriously.

After four hours of hiking we were sweaty and exhausted. The humidity was much worse than the hottest day in CT in summer, and there isn't too much breeze to be found. I passed out on the tile floor of the library until our second hike. This time Ramiro took us on another path that led to a small lake. At one point he stopped and started poking at a leaf that was folded over on itself, and a big fuzzy tarantula crawled out. At the lake, we climbed into a very narrow canoe meant for 5 people - and there were seven of us. Gloria and I could not stop laughing at the situation, because we were clearly much lower in the muddy water than we should have been and any shift of weight sent the canoe listing to one side or the other. Of course laughing just made it more unsteady, especially at one point when we got caught on a log under the water. This was while Ramiro was paddling around and telling us about the piranhas and anacondas living there. I think that was the most terrified I've been in Ecuador so far - really! Murky jungle water scares me like no other.

There was a group of film students from USFQ who came to the station with us to make a documentary about Tiputini. They were friendly and very excited about their film but they got really pushy and annoying on the hikes. Every time there was an animal or something interesting the camera guy had to shove ahead and get the best shot - we were all ready to knock them off the canopy by the end.

We survived the canoe ride, a strenuous stair climb into a wooden observation tower over the canopy, and a (larger) canoe ride back to the station. Ecuador was playing Uruguay that night so they dragged the TV out to the dining room so everyone could watch. It was so funny because we were basically watching TV outside, with bats swooping in and out of the roof. Ecuador totally blew it. They scored and everyone went nuts, until Uruguay scored less than a minute later. Shameful. Uruguay ended up winning on a penalty kick right at the end. Later that night we went on a boat ride to look for caimans, a small type of alligator/crocodile. We saw a few but again the film crew was incredibly annoying. They got mad at us for talking too loudly when we sat for 10 minutes so they could film one caiman that wasn't even moving or anything, when we could have been going further up the river to look for more.

After breakfast Sunday we went out on another early morning hike where we saw a lot of Wooly Monkeys gallivanting through the trees, some kind of snake, some frogs including one called a BUFO!!!, and more bugs (not to mention the ones constantly buzzing around our heads.) Ramiro showed us some crazy trees too. One of them starts its roots at the top of another tree carried by birds or the wind, grows down and plants into the ground, then slowly grows up around the original tree until it takes over and the tree dies. Another one sheds its bark every few months so any threatening vines or other life forms can't harm it. Another called the Walking Palm constantly grows new roots to one side so it appears to be moving. We climbed the highest observation tower (140 feet or so) which was like the most B.A. tree house ever. On our way back to the station we ate some ants that taste like lemon.

That afternoon everyone got into the boat to head down the river, where they let the crazy American students jump out to float down the Tiputini in life jackets. This water is so brown and muddy you can't see six inches, hiding a myriad of creatures I don't even want to know about. I obviously wasn't about to stay on the boat so I went overboard. The current was very strong under the surface so even if you swam hard upstream you barely made any progress. We floated for an hour or so, luckily from my fetal position I didn't brush against anything unknown like some friends did. I was talking to one of the guides after we got back on the boat and he said we definitely passed over several anacondas...eek.

I was sad to leave Tiputini the next day. I woke up early every day and sat by the river before breakfast to look at the water and listen to the rain forest sounds. I wish I could have camped out in the canopy for an entire day to see what animals would show up. I told the cooks I didn't want to leave and they promised I could come back and wash dishes to earn my stay. I loved being so immersed in the jungle far away from civilization, even the bugs and humidity didn't bother me after the first day. It was genuinely upsetting to see the oil companies on our way back and evidence of the forest being cleared for farming or building. The situation in Ecuador looks hopeless. The country depends on petroleum as a primary export, and they can't afford to just stop exploiting it for rainforest conservation. The remaining oil reserves will only last another decade, so either way Ecua is pretty much screwed until they figure out some way to re-figure the export economy and develop industry. It sucks that the rainforest is going to deal with the consequences.

I'll put up some pictures as soon as I can get them from my friends. My camera appears to be working now so I think it was just the humidity...either way I hope it doesn't act up for the rest of my trip. Even camera-less the Amazon was an amazing experience and I need to go back!

Blame it on the a-a-a-a-altitude

Two months down? Insane. I have two and a half to go but there are so many places I want to travel still - and I love my weekends spent in Quito also. Classes are really inconvenient, especially since I need to save my absences for my November visitors: Tim, Ty, and Kelc first, then Jess!!

Last week my friend Andrea in my Católica class invited me to a novatada on Friday. Having no idea what that was, I obviously said yes. She tried to explain it but only came up with an all day party with lots of people and lots of tragos (drinks.) Sold.

I looked up "novatada" and it means "hazing." Basically, the academic departments at Católica are like social groups in themselves, everyone is friends and has class together all the time. Thus, they have to initiate the new people into the program each year. This novatada was for Sociology, and I take an anthro class, so I was just in it for the fun.

I got my IES friend Samantha to come too, more or less by saying "I don't know where or what it is, just meet at 10 and bring seven dollars." Who wouldn't agree to that? We met up with a group of at least 50 other people then loaded onto 2 buses. Everyone was going nuts on the drive there, so we knew we were in for something good.