Shell and the Amazon

Happy Thanksgiving! Well at least that’s what you’ve been celebrating in the US. We just got back from our Amazon trip today so I’ll go over some of the highlights:

Sunday we left Riobamba, but we had to make a lot of stops including the doctor. A lot of people forgot to bring sunglasses to the mountain so they needed their eyes checked afterward. Yoan’s eyes were the worst, and I feel bad that his first snow experience included a few days of snow blindness. (On this trip all of the guys got really sick at one point, and my stomach hated me after a big burger from a street vendor in Riobamba.) We drove east to Shell, which served as our base for the rest of the trip. We had a wooden hostel that was really cool looking, but it was frustrating when our bathroom light broke and we ran out of water.


Left: Eating Jungle Ants. Right: Yoan and I.
---More pictures can be found here.

We had no idea what our schedule would be like in the jungle because everything was planned around our flights into the Amazon. Monday the weather prevented us from flying, but it was really nice in Shell. Instead we rented a nature guide and headed into the jungle by car. We started off at an Arapaima fish hatchery, then we went trekking into the jungle. We headed out along a river and did cool stuff like tribal face painting, eat ants off of leaves, and make clay masks from river mud. Along the way we say a lot of cool plants and wildlife, including giant spiders). Finally we reached a tall waterfall at the end that we could swim under. Afterward we floated down another river in handmade wooden canoes, and visited an indigenous tribe that gave us some chicha (the fermented corn drink). Then we went to a monkey refuge and got to see a bunch of monkeys. This was scary at first because some were demonic looking, but I eventually gave in and played with them.


Left: Holding. Right: Petting.
---More pictures can be found here.

Tuesday was our day to fly into the jungle and after being weighed and sorted into two groups, we were set to head out first. We got in the Cessna and went through the preflight check with the pilot, but after he started the engine we weren’t cleared for take off. The weather was too cloudy out where we were headed. We were disappointed but headed into Puyo, a nearby town for shopping. There were a lot of tourist stores there, but we were able to kill some time. Our next attempt took us through the whole process again, but right before we were cleared to take off, one of the gauges in the plane wasn’t working. So instead of two planes flying out into the Amazon together for a few hours, we had to resort to one plane flying each group out for just a few minutes.

This was still really fun though, and we got to visit a Waorani village that wasn’t too far away. Our Cessna flight took us just over thirty minutes each way and all we could see were green trees and scattered villages. Our group was the second to go, and when we landed a bunch of villagers came out to greet us. They painted our faces and put grass crowns on our heads, and we met their leader, Dyuwi (pronounced ‘Dewey’). Dyuwi was one of the original men from the spearing party in 1956, during Operation Auca. This was the first attempt for outsiders to reach the isolated tribe, who were known for brutal violence. It’s a really touching story and was also made into a movie: The End of the Spear.


Left: Waorani Villagers. Right: The Children.
---More pictures can be found here.

Wednesday was a more adventure filled day and we started out river rafting nearby on the Pastaza. The Rio Pastaza is a river that runs through Ecuador and Peru and is a large tributary to the Amazon. There were some pretty sweet rapids, including one called ‘King Kong’s Hand’. I was put in a group with Jenna, Kelsey, and Amy and we had a crazy guide. During one of the small rapids he called his mom on his cell phone and at one point he just jumped out of the boat for the heck of it. He let us tip the raft too which was really fun.


Left: Getting Ready. Right: Padding Downstream.
---More pictures can be found here.

Afterward we visited the Paillon del Diablo (the devil’s cauldron), a huge waterfall we hiked down to. We were also able to crawl up to the top in a small cave, where we got soaked! Then we rode a terabita (gondola) across a valley to another waterfall. (I forgot my camera on this trip.) We also had some free time in Baños so Thad and I walked over to the famous thermal baths. But we were bummed out when we found out they were closed. (The only hour they close each day was the hour we were there!) So we just walked around town and visited the big cathedral.

Well, that’s the gist of what we did. We left early this morning and got back in time for a Thanksgiving meal with some of the other missionaries. That was really cool, and better than the food we ate in the jungle. Tomorrow is graduation (and Yoan’s birthday) so we’re just going to hang out here in Quito. Apparently we are going to have a feast too (hence the live sheep tied up outside of my dorm room). Saturday morning we fly out to Guayaquil (a coastal city) and then we head for the Galapagos on Sunday. I am really excited for that. It’s so crazy that I’m already flying home in nine days. Well, hasta luego!

Riobamba & Chimborazo

Wow, it sure feels good to be done with classes! Tuesday was our last day and we finished up with our final presentations on Wednesday. After that on Thursday we had a field trip to one of our teacher’s houses in the country (yes, her family has a lot of houses) and we cooked an American meal together for our roommates. Now we are just travelling as part of a two-week travel practicum and it will be 8 weeks before we have classes again. It’s like having a half summer in between semesters!

We’ll have two weeklong trips, with a short stop back at the Seminary in between for graduation. Both Gustavo and Yoan (my roommates) are graduating so that will be cool to see. Our first week trip is to Riobamba and the oriente (Amazon Jungle), and our second trip is to Guayaquil and the Galapagos Islands. A few other people came along with us on this trip, and I’m really glad that Yoan is one of them. I decided to bring my computer with me, so I’ll try to update my blog more often than I have been. Sometimes we have wifi at our hostels.

Anyway, we started our first trip off by heading south to Riobamba, the city below Volcán Chimborazo, the tallest mountain in Ecuador at 20,565 feet. It was a long van ride, but we stayed in the sierra so there weren’t any crazy elevation changes. On the way down we stopped in Latacunga had chugchucara, a traditional (and random) mixed plate of fried pork, potatoes, and bananas, corn, popcorn, and sweet meat pie. Then we had homemade ice cream and I chose avocado, which had an amazing creamy texture. After we got to Riobamba, we went to a giant fruit and vegetable market, which serves as a distribution center for the rest of the country. That was the most produce I’d ever seen in one place and the food was being sold in bulk for rock bottom prices. The guys walked around town afterward and we found a meat market, a bakery with pineapple pie, and an old-fashioned soda fountain where we had some good batidos.


Left: In Front of Chimborazo. Right: NILI Jumping Pic.
---More pictures can be found here.

This morning (Saturday) our whole group headed up to the base of Chimborazo and trekked around below the refuges. Overall we started at around 14,700’ (when the van couldn’t make it any higher) and Thad, Yoan, and I hiked up just beyond the first refuge at 15,800’. It was so nice out with no wind or clouds, and it was really sunny and warm. I spent most of the hike in a t-shirt and shorts, and had to keep reapplying SPF 30 so I wouldn’t burn. But my favorite part was playing in the snow with Yoan, who had never seen it before in his life. He’s from tropical Venezuela and it’s funny how we can take things like that for granted. Like a little kid, he was so excited to see it and really liked throwing snowballs. Plus he could throw them pretty well since he played pro baseball back home as an outfielder. Thad and I had fun showing him how to make snow angels and other snow activities. And when we got far enough ahead of the group, he had a crazy awesome idea: take all of our clothes off and take pictures. (You won’t find those on Facebook.)


Left: Yoan and I. Right: A More Appropriate Picture.
---More pictures can be found here.

Tomorrow we head east to Shell, and there are a lot of activities planned on the way into the jungle. We are also flying small Cessna planes into the Huaroni village sometime early next week. (Those are the fierce people with spears and blowguns who became infamous after attacking a missionary party in the 1950s.) I’ll try to write another update in the next few days, but I doubt there’s a whole lot of places to connect to the internet in the Amazon. Hasta luego!

A Weekend of Mountaineering

This weekend Thad and I had our trip to Cotopaxi and it was an amazing experience. We decided to climb this mountain for a number of reasons. It’s the second tallest mountain in Ecuador at 19,348 feet, but it’s not as technical as other huge mountains. (You don’t have to know a whole lot about mountaineering, you just have to be in really good shape.) It’s one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, and because of the equitorial bulge, it’s also one of the farthest points from the center of the earth. Also, it’s an Ecuadorian icon and the most climbed mountain in the Andes because of this and it’s easy accesibility.


Volcán Cotopaxi: (Not my picture, it was too cloudy.)

Saturday morning we met up with our guide in Quito and headed down to the national park. Segundo was cool but he didn’t really remind us of a mountain guide. He spoke barely any English (except for swear words and glacier commands) and talked more about hot girls than anything else. But he was hilarious and fun to be around.

First on the itenerary was to climb Volcán Rumiñahui, a fifteener inside the park for more acclimation. We drove up to a lake at about 12,600’ and started trekking uphill toward the mountain. It was cloudy and we could barely see the peak but the surrounding area was still really pretty. We hiked through a lot of páramo grass and wound our way up part of the crater rim, but unfortunately we had to turn back at the rocky part of the mountain (just over 13,800’). It was raining pretty hard and there were some thunderstorms, which are dangerous in climbing that kind of rock. Originally we were going to rope up and scramble to the top, so that was disappointing.


Left: Nearby Rumiñahui. Right: Hiking.
---More pictures can be found here.

During the hike Segundo kept asking us if we needed any breaks, but we felt fine with the altitude. He told us we were in a lot better shape than most people, and our first forty minutes of hiking can take others up to two hours with the elevation. Meanwhile our clothes were getting soaked and I realized the jacket they gave me was really cheap because it was soaking wet on the inside. The last part of the decent turned into a slippery swamp and it was hard getting back to the car.

Afterward we headed for a lodge in the park that was just over 12,200’. We had our own cabin, but there was no heat or electricity and it got pretty cold. We tried to dry our clothes with a fire in the fireplace but this didn’t work out too well. Finally we resorted to sleeping with our wet clothes because we didn’t bring very much. That wasn’t too fun, but at least they were somewhat dry in the morning. The lodge had good food and we were served coca tea along with our meals. (It’s popular in mountanous countries and apparently it can help altitude sickness.)

After breakfast we took off for the José Rivas Refuge, on the side of Cotopaxi. It’s really popular among park visitors but it’s mainly for climbers staying the night. We parked the car in a parking area at about 14,700’ and then we made the hike up to the refuge, which was over a thousand feet higher. This took about forty minutes, and we had to carry full backpacks with gear and full summit packs. This was a lot of weight and it felt good to get to the top. There were a lot of interesting people there from all over the world who were really into mountaineering. We were supposed to hike up to the glacier and learn some techniques for crampons (spikes for ice and snow) and ice axe, but there was a rainstorm and we weren’t able to. We didn’t want to be stuck with a bunch of wet clothes again. Segundo told us it was easy enough to figure out, so we felt alright about it. At least we'd have a guide with us on the mountain.


Left: Finally Made It! Right: Refuge Trail.
---More pictures can be found here.

It was cool staying at the refuge but insanely hard to sleep. On top of trying to sleep in really high altitude, there were probably 40 people staying in the same room and there wasn’t a whole lot of personal space. Plus we had to go to bed super early so we could wake up around midnight, which is the best time for climbing before the snow starts to melt in the sun. By the time the first alarm clock went off around 11 pm, I barely got over an hour of sleep and I couldn’t get much more with all of the noise of people getting ready. We stayed in our sleeping bags until Segundo woke us up around midnight, and after breakfast we found out we would be the last group to leave the refuge.

We started the climb at about 1:15 am and trudged uphill in the snow with our headlamps. It felt good to get going, but it was hard on such little sleep. We had a pretty good pace though and even passed a couple groups in the beginning. After about an hour, we arrived at a glacier where we had to put on our crampons and a lot of other people were there too. We roped up quickly and passed them while they were still starting on the ice. It wasn’t too hard walking in the crampons, but it got more and more challenging as the mountain got steeper. It got really steep, but we didn’t need a whole lot of rest and kept passing groups. The glaciers and crevices weren't too hard to navigate, but I lost my balance a couple times trying to toe in with the crampons. Finally we passed the last group and were leading the way. I was sucking air big time at the top, but kept plugging away. It’s crazy how hard altitude gets as you keep getting higher and higher.

We finally got to the summit at 5:45 am, just as the sun was rising. It was cloudy though and we couldn’t see much. (I made a snow angel at the top too.) Our ascent only took four and a half hours, which was crazy fast. (My guidebook says that route takes 5-7.) I still couldn’t believe that we passed everyone because some groups left almost an hour earlier than us. This felt really surreal and we had no idea we would do so well. Other people were impressed and congratulated us as we were coming down, and that felt really good. A couple of guides were even surprised too. There were people with a lot more mountaineering experience than we had, but we were in better altitude shape. It helps living at over 9,000 for three months and running and hiking a lot.


Left: At the Top! Right: Snow Angel at 19,348 feet.
---More pictures can be found here.

The descent wasn’t so fun though. I got altitude sick on the way down and had a horrible naseua headache. (I figured this was a combination of the fast ascent and little sleep.) Because of this I had to take a lot more breaks going down. It was cool to see everything in the daylight though and there were a lot of ice crevices that we couldn’t see at night. I wanted to take a lot of pictures, but my hand went numb everytime I took my glove off. Finally we got to the bottom of the last glacier and decided to slide down to the reguge. We did this sitting down with our ice axes as brakes and we were able to go pretty fast. Afterward we hiked back to the car and drove back to Quito. We got back at noon and still had the whole day!

It’s crazy how fast the semester has gone. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is our last day of class and we have our final presentations on Wednesday. After that we have a field trip on Thursday and two weeks of travel after that. The first week will be to Riobamba and the oriente (Amazon), and the last week will be in Guayaquil and the Galapagos. This will be a lot of fun and it’s hard to fathom that I’m flying home in 18 days. Anyway, hasta luego.

Random Awesomeness

This weekend turned out to be a relaxed weekend without any plans, and it’s our last free weekend of the semester (not counting mountaineering or group travel). I’m still recovering from a sinus infection so it was definitely good taking things easy. But we were able to do some cool stuff this week as well.

I have been thinking a lot about what I still want to do here in Ecuador, and while skimming through a guide book I found a phone number for a paragliding school. Jenna and Kelsey wanted to go too and we were told over the phone that two pilots would be availiable to fly us on Sunday morning. But we found out the spot in South Quito is hard to get to by city bus. One of the pilots lived close to us so we were told to meet up with him. Our instructions: take a taxi to a nearby cross street and some dude named Carlos would be waiting for us in a VW van. (Now, that doesn’t have sketch written all over it…) He turned out to be really cool though, and he was a good pilot: he’d been flying for fifteen years and is training for the world championships in Columbia.


Above: A Great Day for Paragliding...

The park is a grassy field on a large hill and a really popular place for paragliding. There are lots of people who go there to watch during the weekends, and we saw a lot of other paragliders, including the inexperenced. (One took off uncontrollably in the wind and another sent the crowd running away from his landing.) It was a bummer though because Carlos was the only tandem pilot that went. He had the girls to go first because they were lighter and each of their flights lasted about fifteen minutes. However, they didn’t have organized transportation to get back and they had to find their own ways. He and Jenna found a truck (after landing in a field of thorns), but after Kelsey’s flight they had to wait a long time for a city bus. I ended up waiting five hours at the park but by the time it was my turn, it was too cloudy and the wind had died. I was disappointed but I’m glad the others had a good time. I guess I saved $60, but that is super cheap compared to tandem flights anywhere else.

Another thing that I had wanted to do here was puenting. This is usually translated as ‘bungee jumping’, but it’s more of a type of bridge swing. (Instead of a giant stretchy cord, a cable is attached to the top of the other side of the bridge; creating a giant swing after the initial freefall.) Earlier in the semester I found the company that does puenting in Quito, but learned that they only set dates for groups of five or more. After waiting a long time, they contacted me this week with an invite to join a group on Tuesday night. Jenna was down and Josué and Thad wanted to come along too so we could all eat somewhere else for dinner. (We ended up going back to that amazing Mexican restaurant, for the third time.)

When our taxi brought us to the bridge, two guys were getting everything ready and it was a pretty good set up: two harnesses, lots of locking carabeaners, and good rope. They’ve been operating for eight years without an accident, so this fact alone made the $15 price tag more assuring. The bridge was about 120 feet high and in the middle of the city, so the traffic and city lights created an intense atmosphere. I was the first one to go and had a lot of adrenaline flowing. The only scary part is looking off the bridge leading up the jump, but I went backwards and afterward wished I’d gone forwards. My lower harness wasn’t exactly comfortable but overall it was a good experience. Unfortunately, it was too dark, rainy, and cloudy to get good pictures or video, but here is a YouTube video of what we did:



Wednesday we had a field trip to a museum of colonial archives, and there were a lot of paintings, sculptures, maps, and plant species. It wasn’t like a traditional museum, it was more like something you would see in a National Treasure movie and there was a lot of great hidden stuff. Afterward we went to eat lunch a traditional restaurant that had some interesting food choices. I put together the weirdest meal I’ve ever eaten: roasted guinea pig, intestine soup, a side of dried blood, and Sierrian chicha (a fermented corn drink). I shared the cuy (guinea pig) and got a nearly meatless sections of the head, back, and arms; which were really good but I didn’t like the skin. Also I like fried intestines, but the soup was funky. I only made it halfway through and was glad to finish someone’s pork fritada instead. The dried blood had the texture of sun-dried tomatoes with barely any flavor, but the chicha was good and a lot smoother than the homemade stuff I had back in August.


Left: Our NILI Group. Right: My Interesting Lunch.

That night we went to another Liga soccer game in the South American cup quarterfinals. This time it was against “Newell’s Old Boys” from Argentina (so random that their name is in English) and the stadium was a lot more crazy. The first match in Argentina was a 0-0 tie, so both team’s hopes of a championship were riding on this game. It was scoreless and intense throughout, but finally the Liga pulled through with an emotional goal in the 79th minute. This was a great game and now they advance to the semifinals, but I doubt we'll have time to go to anymore games.

This afternoon Josué, Thad, and I decided to head back to Colonial Quito once again. Our main goal was to check out the Casa de Alabado, a new Precolumbian art museum, and that turned out to be really cool. We also found an awesome handmade candy store, enjoyed batido smoothies (avocado, carrot, and mango), and got ripped off by a volunteer worker in the San Francisco cathedral. (He offered us a private tour for a small donation and after a lame five-minute walkthrough he asked us for five bucks.)

Sorry my blogs have been getting long. I’ve been getting in the habit of only writing every week. Anyway, this is our big climbing weekend so I’ll make sure to post when we get back. Here’s a rough itenerary of what’s going on: Saturday morning we’ll climb Volcán Rumiñahui (15,459’), Sunday we’ll hike up to Cotopaxi’s second refuge (15,748’), and Monday is our summit attempt (19,347’) starting at 1 am! This will be fun and I'll try to take some good pictures. Anyway, hasta luego!

Five-Day Break

This past weekend we had a five-day break! The first two days of November are Ecuadorian federal holidays to celebrate the Day of the Dead, but President Correa declared Wednesday off as well. Actually, we pretty much had a six-day break because Friday we just made traditional holiday foods: colada morada is a thick, delicious drink with a bunch of fruits and spices cooked together, and guaguas de pan (bread babies) are small loaves of bread that are rolled with filling and decorated to look like little people.

Last Thursday, Thad and I booked a guided tour of Volcán Cotopaxi, which we’d been talking about doing for a while. At 19,347 feet, it’s one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and an Ecuadorian icon. Also because of the earth’s shape, it’s one of the closest points to the sun. It’s not as technical as other huge mountains, but it will still be a challenge and we’ve been trying to get ready for it. Our tour is the second weekend in November, so we still have a week.

Sorry this post is late…we’ve been without internet for a couple days now. I’m uploading this with wifi at the mall. Anyway, this past weekend can pretty much be summarized with two activities. First, Thad and I went up north and climbed Volcán Imbabura and then we headed south with Josué to a rural hostel in the middle of nowhere.

Volcán Imbabura

Left: Over 15,000 Feet! Right: Heading back down.
---More pictures can be found here.

Thad and I wanted to climb another mountain and we decided to go to Volcán Imbabura, a fifteener a couple hours north of Quito. It’s not as tall as a lot of the other volcanoes, but it’s a really physical hike that appealed to us. According to the internet and our guidebooks, La Casa Aída was the only hostel by the mountain so we decided to go there. Originally we were going to leave on Saturday morning, but Thad’s roommate convinced us to stick around for an indigenous wedding that was happening on campus. (The seminary shares a campus with a conference center, so there are often interesting events.) The wedding turned out to be really similar to one back home and we were the only gringos there.

Afterward, we had to buy bus tickets for Ibarra and we ended up waiting in line at the terminal for over two hours, which was almost as long as our bus ride. When we finally made it to Ibarra we caught a taxi to La Esperanza, a small neighboring village at the foot of the volcano. We ended up getting a crazy driver, who wasn’t too professional (dressed in sweat pants and texting) and drove really fast. He was all over the place, narrowly missing huge potholes in the rocky indigenous roads. Once we got to La Esperanza he didn’t know where our hostel was so he had to pull over and ask. He finally found it, but didn’t have change for a $20 and told me to go ask the hostel owner. The owner and the locals in the restaurant didn’t have smaller bills either, but they managed to scrounge together $5 in coins. That was awkward to ask for money, but they were super chill and said we could pay them back through the owner.

During our stay, the hostel owner was accommodating and a really good cook. After putting our packs in our room we had an awesome dinner of tomato soup, veggie omelet, and beef strips. The cheapest rooms were $7 a person and meals were only $3 each. When we told her our plans to hike the mountain she generously offered to serve us breakfast at 6 am and hired a truck for us to get to the trailhead.

Sunday we woke up early to a pancake breakfast and a truck picked us up afterward. Our hostel was just below 9,000’ and the truck ride took us through the scenic countryside to almost 11,000’. There we started the hike through a lot of parámo (tall mountain grass) that looked really cool but was hard to see around. We soon got lost and ended up wandering the wrong direction on an animal trail. (Note to self: buy a topographic map if you go to a mountain that isn’t climbed a lot.) After roaming aimlessly for a while, we finally figured out the right direction and saw the main trail, where a group of climbers caught up with us. With amazing luck it turned out to be a mountain guide who was taking his son and nephew up that mountain for their first time. He had made the trek over 100 times and offered to give us a free tour.

Ivan was really knowledgeable and pleasant to be around. He was able to answer every question we had and told us a lot about the native plant and bird species as well. Once we got above 13,000’ we lost visibility in the clouds and it was nice to know where to go. There was some fun scrambling (rocky sections where you have to use your hands) and we weren’t able to see a whole lot. Finally we made it up to the first summit at around 15,000’ and had lunch. There are two summits connected by the crater rim, and the second is only 100-200’ higher but it adds an extra two hours on to the trip. He said it was best to head back after lunch so we stuck with him. Overall our round trip was 8 hours and he gave us a ride back to our hostel.

It was funny because back at the car he said something I didn’t understand (about a coin jiggling in his glove box) and when I asked him to say it again he managed to describe it in English. I was surprised and commented in Spanish how good his English was, and then in perfect English he said: “Well I have to speak it to be a guide because a lot of clients are English speaking. I speak French too.” This was mind blowing to have known him so long on the mountain and we didn’t even know he spoke our language. He gave us an awesome experience and we were thankful for his selflessness and generosity.

Afterward we decided to stay another night in the hostel and wanted to meet up with the others in Otavalo the next day. But it was frustrating because we didn’t have cell phone signal to call them. We had perfect signal on top of the mountain, but none down at our hostel. Go figure. So we headed back to Quito.

Secret Garden Cotopaxi

Left: The NILI Guys. Right: Mountain Biking.
---More pictures can be found here.

We got back on Monday and decided to head somewhere with Josué. On the internet we found The Secret Garden Cotopaxi, a resort in the middle of nowhere near the mountains. Perfect. We caught a ride from The Secret Garden Quito, which we found to be a commune of European travelers. We shared a van with two guys from Ireland, a guy from Australia, and a guy from Germany, and they were interesting to talk to. The ride was beautiful and took us south on a rocky road through the scenic avenue of the volcanoes. The Secret Garden resort was in an awesome location at about 11,400’, however, the only people that spoke Spanish were the cook and the horse guide. Everyone else was from Europe and we felt like we were there too. (The other visitors were from England, Ireland, Germany, and France, and the manager was from Poland.) After spending so much time with other South Americans, we went through culture shock with so many white people and spoken English.

One of the traditions at the resort is taking the newcomers on a hike the first day. After lunch and orientation, we were fitted with a pair of rubber boots (which they could barely find in my size) and headed out to the river, where we waded upstream and climbed the ravine up to a waterfall. There we were able to jump into the freezing cold river water, and I made the jump with two guys from Ireland and England. I didn’t have my altimeter with me, but it was probably about 11,700’, and on a cold day too. I accidently dropped my towel into the river and it wasn’t too fun chasing it downstream.

For the rest of the day we relaxed at the picturesque resort, and it was really enjoyable to be out of the city again. We had some awesome burritos for dinner and than relaxed in the Jacuzzi. Our room was freezing cold that night because it didn’t have any heat or light, and all we had were candles. (The resort was self-sustaining and didn’t use electricity.) One of our favorite parts was the composting toilet that had an indoor garden and a view of all the mountains.

The next day, they offered lots of activities like hiking and horseback riding, but we decided to do something on our own. They had mountain bikes so Thad and I rode up to the entrance to Cotopaxi national park (up about 800’ to 12,200’). The bikes were among the crappiest I have ever seen, and that’s saying a lot. (I’ve worked on hundreds of bikes the past couple summers and know that these wouldn’t even be worth tuning up.) My bike was not even efficient to pedal uphill because the chain rings were bent and the bottom bracket was totally messed up. The axles were loose too among other things, and Thad’s crank arm kept falling off so we had to beat it back on with a rock. The cheap aluminum frames and the indigenous roads made for a rough ride, but overall it was good to get out and the bikes were free to use.

Afterward we shared a ride to the airport with a girl named England. And now that we're back in South America we've gone through culture shock again. But it's awesome having another weekend after only two days of class. Hasta luego!