So I've finally returned from a crazy whirlwind few days in the Oriente (the rainforest in the Amazon basin), and it was absolutely amazing. I'll try to explain what we did each day...
Monday: After breakfast in Quito and delicious coffee at Este Cafe, we all piled into our bus to head over to the Oriente. Two hours into the ride, we stopped at Papallacta, some amazing, crystal clear hot springs high up in the mountains. We spent a few hours soaking in the hot mineral water (and jumping into the frigid river water) and enjoying the beautiful mountains, and then had a fabulous picnic lunch with delicious crusty bread, peanut butter, jelly, cheese, fruit, and pretty much all that is delicious and was not normally eaten in my homestay. After another 3-4 hours on the bus (with a stop in the city of Tena for ice cream), we arrived at Aliñahui Lodge for hammocks, dinner, playing cuarenta, and sleeping in our cute little cabins.
Tuesday: We were split up into two groups, and I stayed back at Aliñahui with my group, while the others left. We took a short walk through the forest, stopping to look at enormous trees and eat lemon-flavored ants, and then we were split up individually and dropped off in the forest out of site of anyone else and without cameras or notebooks. They left us there for an hour to sit and think (and watch bugs and get hit by falling leaves and listen to bird sounds) before retrieving us to finish the hike. It was a really interesting experience being completely alone with nothing to do but take in my surroundings and get lost in my thoughts. We returned for lunch and then went to AmaZOOnico, an animal reserve/rehabilitation center to see all sorts of amazing animals that have been rescued from hunters or people who tried to keep them as pets. We then returned for dinner before getting a lecture/demonstration by a local man on shamanistic practices and taking a night walk to find the ridiculously huge bugs that abound in the rainforest.
Wednesday: We left Aliñahui to switch places with the other group and go to the school in the small town of San Pedro. We spent a while singing and painting and playing with the kids before we all gathered together for a minga (communal shared labor), planting fruit-bearing trees in the school's small garden/farm. At first it looked like a pretty easy project with just a few plants to work with, but it was actually shockingly hard work. We (and by "we" I mostly mean the 5th graders who are far more experienced than us) had to machete down all of the vegetation before digging the holes through extremely clay-y soil and planting spiny little plants, all in 100% humidity with tons of bugs flying around. It was pretty fun working with the children, and it's nice to know that in a few years these kids will be able to eat the fruit from the trees we helped to plant together. After a tour of the community's shared farm and kind of surreal soccer game against the children and teachers, the rest of the day was spent resting at the Arahuno lodge. There, we swam in the river, played with the pet monkey Mona, fed turtles, lay in hammocks, ate the world's most delicious birthday cake, and had a generally completely lovely time.
Thursday: We spent the morning at Arahuno learning about local Kichwa ceramic art (while Mona wreaked havoc in the background) and walking around the forest learning about indigenous culture and practices. Mona finally decided to briefly be my friend (which mostly entailed her biting me, hitting me, and looking down my shirt) before we returned to Aliñahui to reunite with the other half of the group. I took a nap in a hammock for the afternoon before we had a short lecture from the director of the Jatun Sasha reserve about rainforest conservation issues, and we spent the rest of the evening at a bar called El Laboratorio, dancing and drinking beer in an open-air, thatched building in the middle of the forest.
Friday: We left Aliñahui in the morning for a generally uneventful ride back to Quito, with the exception of a small earthquake that occurred during our stop for lunch. Upon our arrival back at the Hotel Alston, we finally received our letters from our new host families. I'll be living with a single mother and a 16-year-old daughter, along with a maid who has lived with them for 25 years and her 24-year-old son, in the north-eastern part of Quito (hopefully near some of my friends). I think it'll be a totally different experience living with them than the family in Los Chillos, and I look forward to experiencing something new and different.
Now it's Saturday and after buying flowers for my new family and picking up my freshly clean laundry (it smelled super feo after the Oriente), and I have a few minutes left to pack my life back up and prepare to meet the new family. There's a World Cup qualifying game today between Ecuador and Uruguay happening in Quito today that we'll probably watch on TV, although it's a beautiful day, and I'd love to explore the city. The first weekend with a family is pretty awkward, so I hope all goes smoothly...
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