La Segunda Semana

As Week 2 of my Ecuadorian experience comes to a close, I realize how much has changed since I posted last. For one, I’ve completed my first full week of work. I’ve also made new friends (Ecuadorian and otherwise), improved my Spanish, explored new parts of the environment, and further attempted to immerse myself in the culture…with varying degrees of success. In other words, I’ve got a lot to cover in a single post. As I was looking through the absurd number of photos that I’ve taken in the past few weeks and deciding which ones to prioritize in my post, I found myself automatically sorting them into the categories of selva, río, playa, and bosque – jungle, river, beach, and forest.  So instead of running through the events of the past two weeks in a chronological and highly boring way, I thought I’d organize them into these categories. After all, the diversity of the natural environment along the Ecuadorian coast was one of my main reasons for coming here, and it continues to play a major role in everything that I experience here. In other words, I feel like I’m interacting with el medio ambiente more than I ever have before – I work in it, spend my free time in it, and explore it whenever I can – and I honestly can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing with my summer.

La Selva

Last week, upon hearing that I was a student of environmental sciences, my host mother Liz insisted on taking me into la selva (the Ecuadorian jungle) in order to check up on the plot of land that her family owns there…which I later discovered to be approximately one half of a small mountain. Casual. It took almost three hours for us to hike from Puerto Rico to the gate that marks the beginning of the Bermeo property, and once there, the hike got real. I like to think of myself as a decently outdoorsy person, having done a fair amount of hiking and camping with my family when I was younger, but I can’t say I’ve ever experienced a hike quite like this one before. After fighting our way through densely-vegetated jungle paths (which were quite reminiscent of the ones I encountered in the depths of the Peruvian Amazon, no jokes) to reach the base of the mountain, we had to climb directly through the vegetation in order to reach the summit, using tree trunks and vines to pull ourselves up the steep incline. Not so bad, with the exception of one major problem: the soil on the forest floor was so loose that I would constantly lose my footing and go sliding back down the mountain, landing ten or fifteen feet below with a face full of dirt and my clothing covered with sticks and leaves. It was a complete mess, and completely hilarious -- Liz just about died laughing every time I´d go crashing down the mountain. Needless to say, I do my best to entertain the people.

 

 The road into the jungle

 

The freshest (and probably best) orange I've ever had...straight from the tree

 

 There were a bunch of really spooky, weird-looking cows wandering through the forest...this one kind of reminded me of something out of Where the Wild Things Are

Along the way, we found about ten different places where illegal loggers had sneaked onto the property and cut down old-growth trees in order to sell the wood to furniture-builders. The deforestation sites were pretty shocking. They looked like wounds in the otherwise untouched forest -- gaping holes in the vegetation filled with sawdust and severed branches. The thing that was most upsetting about them wasn't that the trees had been cut down in the first place...it was the sheer volume of wood that the loggers wasted. At each site, they left hundreds of huge branches on the forest floor, simply because they didn't have the manpower to carry all of the wood they had cut down to the bottom of the mountain. Liz and I spent the rest of the day working to reforest the areas damaged by the loggers, which involved digging up sapling trees from different areas, re-planting them in the cleared sites, and hauling buckets of water from nearby streams for watering the transplants. I also began the intimidating task of learning the names of native plant and tree species in Spanish, which Liz told me would be very helpful at my job, where I would be doing much of the same. I found that I honestly loved working in the forest: it was solitary, wild, and unbelievably beautiful. I was reluctant to leave when it began to get dark, but was soon distracted by the daunting task of getting myself back down the mountain in one piece (which, contrary to my expectations, was even more difficult than the ascent.) After falling on my face about seven more times (my Ecuadorian modus operandi, as it would seem), I finally started to get the hang of the technique: you dash from tree to tree, crashing into trunks to stop your momentum, until you reach the bottom of the mountain. Human pinball, essentially. When we arrived back in Puerto Rico hours later, I was exhausted, mosquito-bitten, covered from head to toe with all manner of forest debris....and totally enamored with the Ecuadorian forest.

 

The view from about halfway up the mountain

 

Deforestation, compliments of illegal loggers

 

Rocking the hat and walking stick like a champ, of course

El Río

Only a day after my exhilarating journey up and down the mountain with Liz, I decided to accompany her and a few of her friends to the Ayampe River, which is just down the coast from Puerto Rico near the town of Las Cabañas. Their goal for the day? Fishing for freshwater shrimp, naturally. I was intrigued, and decided to go along for the trip and learn how it was done. Like the selva the day before, the environment surrounding the river was very wild and beautiful, and I was happy just to sit on its banks and enjoy the scenery as Liz and her friends worked their way slowly upstream, dragging nets through the shallow water and catching a surprising number of small fish and sizable freshwater shrimp, which apparently hang out beneath the flat rocks at the bottom of the river. Who knew?

 

El Río Ayampe

 

The shallows

 

A bestie of Liz's, catching mad shrimps

  

The riverbank

La Playa

I know I talked a little bit about how beautiful the beach here is in my last post, but I definitely didn’t do it justice. Over the past two weeks, I’ve been spending as much time there as I possibly can – going for walks before dinner to watch the sunset, swimming and sunbathing on the weekends, and even walking over to read my book and chill in a hammock there on rainy days. I honestly don't think I'll ever get sick of it.

 

The beach at Puerto Lopez

 

A fave hangout spot in Puerto Rico

 

An Ecuadorian sunset

 

Last Saturday...one of the most beautiful beach days we've had so far

 

Mis amigas Alisa and Alex on the aforementioned beautiful beach day

As per usual, I'm out of battery power and overstaying my welcome in a wifi area, so I'll have to save my descriptions of the bosque, and the actual work that I do there, for tomorrow or Wednesday. For now, I'll leave you with a fun message from the back of the Ecuadorian bus seats...

 

Una Llegada Complicada

So it's almost been about a week since I first arrive in Ecuador, but it feels like it's been ages.

My trip got off to a pretty rocky start when Delta lost my luggage somewhere in Atlanta (I arrived in Quito in the middle of the night, alone and pretty much empty-handed), and got even rockier the next day when I had my semi-traumatic first experience with the Ecuadorian bus system. What was supposed to be a ten hour ride from Quito to Puerto Lopez turned into twelve hours of panicked confusion -- the bus that had promised to take me all the way to my final destination arbitrarily decided that it didn't feel like making the trip, and dropped me on the side of the road on the outskirts of a small town...in the middle of nowhere. It suffices to say that I was a little stressed to find myself in this situation, which was only exacerbated by the fact that I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since early that morning (the bus made stops for highly variable amounts of time, and the idea of getting off the bus to buy something to eat or drink and having it leave without me was enough to keep me rooted to my seat) and was suffering from a severe lack of sleep. Anyways, I got on the next bus that came barreling down the road, which was luckily headed to a town called Jipijapa -- not where I ultimately needed to go, but at least in the correct province. I got to Jipijapa at around 7:00 pm (I had departed from Quito at 8:00 am), found a bus headed to Puerto Lopez, bought myself a bottle of water, and finally was able to relax a little bit.

When I arrived in Puerto Lopez it was already dark, so I couldn't quite appreciate the ocean vistas that it's famous for, but the town was still bustling with people and noise. After about ten minutes I managed to locate my host mother, Liz, who had slipped into the new supermarket to search for deals while she waited for me, and the two of us took a taxi to her house, which as it turns out isn't actually in the canton of Puerto Lopez, but in a town about ten minutes outside of it called Puerto Rico. Anyways, I got there, ate some food, realized how incredibly rusty my Spanish was as I attempted to exchange pleasantries with Liz, and almost immediately collapsed into bed. And thus ended my saga.

 La Casa Bermeo

 My Room on the Third Floor

The View from my Window

So far, I've really liked living with Liz and her family. She's one of those tiny women with an unbelievably huge personality -- always making jokes (many of which I don't quite understand...), chatting, bustling around. She also seems to know everyone in Puerto Rico, Puerto Lopez, and pretty much everywhere in between. She has two sons who live at home with her (Antonio and Miguel, who are 20 and 24, respectively) and another son, Samuel, who is married and lives just down the road with his wife and daughter. They're all incredibly friendly, and the sons are super fun and jokester-y, but I initially had a lot of trouble keeping up with their high-speed Spanish. Due to my insecurity about my Spanish skills and general inability to understand what was occurring during standard social situations (e.g. breakfast), I spent my first few days in Ecuador being pretty withdrawn and solitary, despite the fact that all I really wanted was to be polite and friendly. It was a little bit like reliving the first few days of college (wondering who your friends will be, wanting people to like you, trying to be charming)...except as a mute. Aka pretty much impossible.

After going through a series of small existential crises (Sin mis palabras, ¿quién soy?), I sucked it up and got over my shyness in about two days.  And despite my intimidation, I took Miguel and Antonio up on their offer when they invited me to go out on a fishing boat with them and their friends to La Isla Salango on Wednesday...and it ended up being one of the most beautiful excursions I've ever been on. We snorkled, swam, fished, and explored the island, while I did my best to be socially functional in a different language...with moderate success. Since then, my Spanish has been coming back to me pretty quickly, so I'm gaining confidence and becoming more and more outgoing each day.

 

Sunset over the Pacific, from Salango

I'm pretty much out of battery power, so I'll have to save my descriptions of my what I've actually been doing this whole time for my next trip to the wifi zone. Contrary to how it may seem (especially according to my angsty description of the bus trip), I´m actually loving Ecuador so far -- the people are all very friendly and the natural scenery is unbelievable. The whole experience will obviously take some getting used to, and is definitely testing my independence and adaptability, but I know it will be worth it in the end. To sum up the highs and lows that I´ve experienced so far, I've compiled two short lists that paint a pretty accurate picture of my living arrangements here in Ecuador...

A few things I love about where I'm living:

1. The beach. It's beautiful beyond belief...and for some reason, everyone is really casual about it. I honestly find it hard to understand why the town's residents don't just hang out there all the time...but I guess they could have other things to do.

 

The Path to the Beach

 

 The Beach at Puerto Rico

 

I can't get over the fact that this is like four minutes away from me...

2. The limones. My host mother puts lime in literally every dish she cooks (there are about fifty lime trees in the orchard in the backyard.) And I LOVE lime. Thus, I generally love the food here.

3. The colors. Everything in Ecuador seems brighter than in the U.S....from the walls inside of the house (various shades of yellow, green, pink, orange and blue) to the cheap plastic bags you get at the grocery store (blue and pink and yellow striped). Why not?

3. The dogs. There are dogs everywhere. There's a perrito named Blanco who permanently resides in the front yard (but technically belongs to a family down the road) who without a doubt likes me more than everyone else I've met in Ecuador combined. He acts like he's going to die of excitement every time I come home (seeing as I'm the only one who ever gives him any attention), and makes for great company. Plus, he doesn't care that my accent is bad.

 

Blanco/Mi Mejor Amigo

A few things that aren't so hot:

1. The showers. LOLZ. No but in all seriousness, the showers are freezing, but I stopped minding after about a day. Also, sometimes the water simply doesn't feel like running and I have to get in the shower with a huge bucket of water from the cistern and a hollowed-out coconut shell...which is surprisingly fun. Classic personal hygiene.

2. The roosters. Now don't get me wrong -- I'm am all for possessing fun farm animals, especially since their presence provides me with eggs in the morning. However, the six roosters who reside just below my window seem to have decided that the prime time for communication with their rooster compañeros is between 4:30 and 7:30 am, which makes for some exceedingly difficult mornings. Furthermore, their calls are a far cry from the quintessential "cockadoodledoo" -- they seriously sound like they're being strangled mid-doodle. I've seriously considered feeding them lozenges.

3. The mosquitoes. But they're pretty annoying wherever you are in the world.

4. The buses. Ecuadorian buses are the worst kind of public transportation I've ever encountered, and I unfortunately must rely on them to get everywhere I want to go. They're hot, cramped, and impossible to understand, seeing as they never follow any sort of defined route or schedule and somehow seem to cost different amounts every time I take them. Also, it's totally in their power to drop you on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Not that I'm bitter or anything.


Until next time, tanto amor de Ecuador...