This is where we stayed in Ecuador. No, we really did. But only for one night. =)
haha.
I got back from Ecuador last Wednesday, so I have been back over a week, but I’ve been too busy and tired to do anything here on mibba (aside from posting another journal that I took from the entries I wrote while I was down there)
[Here comes the part where I rave about how much I loved it]
The trip was amazing, beyond amazing. We were in the airport a bunch and I’m sick of flying and airports and all the customs stuff, but it was worth it. Quito is an amazing city, and we barely got to see any of it. We spend three nights there, but they were spread out through out the whole trip, and all we really did in Quito was eat dinner, go swimming in the pool of Hotel Quito, and we went shopping once (I got this super cute jacket xD). The top floor of the hotel, where we ate breakfast, had a fantastic view of Quito.
So we took a bus through the Andes mountains, stopping at times (a hot spring, hiking, haciendas, llamas) and then we stopped for the night in a town which I know the name of, and can sort of say, but if I tried to spell it, it would be wrong. Anyways, this was a complete CREEPER of a hotel. When we arrived, it was after eight at night, so it looked even scarier. There was this pool that we called the death pit, and our room was really far away from everyone else’s and it the door to it was up on the roof!
A semi group photo in front of the hotel (this is the same hotel as in the first picture)
The death pit
the dog, who we named Eddie, but then we found out it was a girl named Sarah. =D
We drove all the next day, and then we arrived in Coca to spend the night. There were a ton of squirrel monkeys there, and a bunch of other animals running about.
Don't ask. I don't know what they were doing either.
SWIMMING. Here’s where the non-nature related drama starts. The guy I sort of like and his friend, along with Jojo, Rachel, and I, went swimming that night at 9:00. There were no pool hours, but they asked that we keep the noise down after some of the… incidents =P
So the pool had a slide, and it was typical water slide that hotel pools have, except this pool was outside. The five of us formed trains as we went down the side. At first we made the two guys go in front, and then the three of us behind them, but after a while, we ended up in a boy/ girl order, and I was third, so I had Will in front of me and the guy I like behind me. I was basically a dude sandwich. So that was awkward.
Another time on the slide, we were just going down it randomly, and the guy I like went down before me, and I thought he was all the way in the pool, so I went. Turns out, he was waiting around the bend in the slide, so he had to dodge me. I wouldn’t think anything of it, but the next three or four times I went down the slide, he was waiting around the bend for me, and either he would dodge me or let me run into him, taking him down the rest of the way with me. And that was interesting.
And the most awkward slide moment, was when I went down, and Will was standing with one foot on either side of the slide, and he fell on top of me. So for the last quarter of the way down, Will was pretty much on top of me, and when we hit the water, his hands were at my waist. AWKWARD. Especially since Will isn’t the guy that I like.
(Oh, and on the last day of the trip, when we were stuck in Miami for the night, Jojo told me that the guy I like had his eyes glued to me this day at the pool in Coca. I don’t know what to think of that. Even though I like him, it kind of makes me self conscious.)
Moving on from the pool (which we stayed in until 11:30 at night), the next day we had a long boat ride down the Coca and the Napo River to get to the jungle lodge.
They gave us a coctail when we first got there. There was rum in it, so a few people got a little buzzed. Aparently they didn’t realize that our group was going to be of high school students.
The jungle lodge was amazing. The food was amazing. The sounds at night were amazing. The animals were amazing. The jungle was amazing. The whole freaking thing was amazing.
We got to fish for piranhas. We got to swim with piranhas. We saw Howler Monkeys and turantulas.
We went up top a tall observation tower to view the canopy of the rainforest.
A giant millipede crawled on my hand (and in Bennett’s armpit). We saw arm ants and marching wasps.
I shot a blowgun and I met an indigenous tribe.
We beat Jenga. I saw leaf cutter ants and this amazing spider web.
Our guide made me a crown out of a fern.
And then it was all over. We were only in the Amazon for three full days and two partial days (the rest of those two days were spent in transit).
After a long, miserable, wet, cold, two-hour boat ride back to Coca, and a short flight, we were back in Quito for the night. We ate dinner out at sports bar type place and we went swimming at 10:00 at night. There were a few extra people in the pool with us this time, two other guys, and there wasn’t a slide, so nothing too awkward happened. Except we played Marco Polo and I cheated a lot. The guy I like was really bad at the game and was usually It, and he was “Determined to get me” as he told me after I had swam away from him really quickly one of the times. =)
The next day we were on our way to the Galapagos. And that meant another half a day of planes and airports. We landed early afternoon and took a small motorized boat out to the small (100 person) cruise ship. We spent another three full days here.
We saw sea lions and marine iguanas.
There were penguins (yes, at the equator).
We saw sea Turtles, sharks, eagle rays, giant schools of fish while snorkeling, which we went once and sometimes twice a day. We hiked up the top of one of the inactive volcanoes, and around the islands. Lava cactus. Lava lizard. LAVA. Sunsets. Hermit crabs tickled my feet.
Big and happy land iguanas.
Giant tortises.
We saw a whale skeleton that our guide joked was a giant iguana skeleton and Rachel believed him. Though she also believed him when he told us the statue of a park ranger person (complete with GPS and a baseball hat) was Darwin.
We buried Peter in the sand as a transsexual mermaid. AND WE SAW BOOBIES! Not that kind of boobies. The bird. Blue footed boobies pwn.
But we had to leave the Galapagos too. It was all too soon. But we flew back to Quito and the next morning, we flew into Miami, where we learned our flight to Chicago was canceled, so we spent the night in Miami. That was fun. It meant we got to miss another day of school =D
I’m sad that the trip is over, but it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced in my fifteen (ALMOST SIXTEEN!) years. I would go again in a heartbeat, especially if the same group of people went along with me. –sigh- I’ll stop being all nostalgic now. =)
Peace&Love, Erin