A few more jungle photos!

Here are a few more photos from a friend who took them in the jungle.

A little something I picked up at the beach

Flower Plantation

Today I visited a flower plantation where they grow roses for exportation. The pink and white ones are sent to Russia, and they wait until the stem is a full meter (3 ft) long before they cut it. The flowers were all so gorgeous, but were a lot more expensive than the ones on the streets. These ones are of the highest quality and are grown with only green methods. They take any plants they don´t use and turn them into fertilizer for the other plants. They also run cow manure through a huge strainer to create a liquid fertilizer. The flowers that were ready to cut were taller than I could reach with my hands, and they were the longest stems I had ever seen! Gorgeous flowers... They grow 52 different varieties for exportation to countries all over the world. It was a really awesome place to see, and I took so many photos I don´t know what to do with them all!!!

More on the jungle

So here is a bit more information about the jungle trip: The first day we took the bus for about six hours and then pulled up to a river and stopped. We put all of our stuff in long, moter powered canoe type boats. The boats took us down the river until we got to Casa Suizo (http://www.casadelsuizo.com/site/eng/hotel.asp). Check out the website, it has amazing photos of the hotel and the activities. We checked into our rooms which had little decks with hammocks. It was really humid and our first step was to slather our skin with sun block and mosquito repellant. I can´t tell you how much I appreciate the feeling of clean, dry skin after the jungle. We met up for lunch by the pool, then had a chance to jump in the water and swim a little bit before we went on our first little excursion. We visited a butterfly farm, where they have tons of butterflies, some of which are endangered while others are exported. The brown butterfly with the eye-like wings was about as big as my hand. Others were bright breen and blue, gorgeous! That night we went into town, which is a tiny little place with a little karaoke bar and a little dance club. As a point of reference, a liter of coke costs the same as almost a liter of beer, one dollar. There was a lot of karaoke that night. I got up around 6:30 and read by the pool until breakfast at 7:30 on Friday. At 9, we put on our swimming suits, and our long pants and mud boots and trekked into the jungle. We took the moterized boats up river and entered the jungle from there. We went on about a three hour or so hike where we got to see all sorts of plants. The dripping tree secretes dragon blood, which is used to treat gastritis and ulcers. When you rub it for a minute or less, it becoems a cream which can be used to treat acne, among other things. There was also a tree that ants use to live in and to lay eggs. When you break open the bark, you see all the ants. They were about the size of sugar ants and when you bite them, they taste like lemon! We didn´t get to swing on jungle vines, because you never know when they will break, but we did get to swing through the jungle on a rope to simulate the experience. It was amazing!!! In the group photo you can see my quen of the jungle hat, which had already begun to unravel. I will try to get my hands on one of the pictures with the lips I had, too. Eventually, we walked back to the river and tied together pieces of balsa wood with a rope to form a raft. We threw our jungle clothes into the moter boats and went down the river on our rafts. Along the way, I did a cannonball off the raft and into the river, which was a new experience. Once we got back we had lunch and in the afternoon we went into town to see how the indiginous families create the crafts that they do. We drank Chicha, which is an alcohol they make from yucca. We also tried shooting the darts out of the super long wooden blow guns. The people there use a little bit of venom on the tips of the darts to immobilize animals they hunt. We also watched a woman create a bowl out of clay. There are only four women left in the village with that skill. They take about 6 days to craft one bowl and pain them using natural rocks as dye and use paintbrushes made from the hair of the littlest children. All of the designs are made up by the women and take a long time working with great precision to finish. Saturday was our last full day in the jungle and we started it off with breakfast at 7:30 and left for Amazoonico at 9. That is a wildlife refuge. They take in animals and rehabilitate them so that they can return to the wild. Some animals can never go back, like a monkey who rips off other monkey´s arms, and birds with clipped wings from people who owned them. After touring the facility, we hopped onto inner tubes and floated down the river to an area that had a rope swing. I couldn´t possibly say no to the opportunity to swing off a rock ledge into a river in the amazon rainforest, could I? You can´t let being afraid of heights stand in your way when you know you may never be able to go back! If was a great rush and the water was amazing. After lunch, our incredibly worn out group went on another hike to see the plantations. We saw where they grow yucca and other things. Then we saw where families pan for gold. They spend all day in the water and find tiny bits of gold in each bowl they pan through. It is hard work, in the water, bent over all day. The families, adults as well as children, become sick a lot because of the work. That night was the 4th of July, so naturally, we sang Karaoke again. I say we in the generic way, because I didn´t sing, I just provided moral support. In the morning, we ate breakfast and headed back home on the boats, then on the bus. It was an amazing experience, but I noticed things like the hotel in comparison to the town that it was in. I wish I could put up all the pictures of the town and the people there, but there is no way I could with the internet connections here. It would take forever.

Anyway, I have my last weekend coming up, then I had back the following weekend. It is going ot be hard to leave the wonderful people here. My family is truly wonderful, I couldn´t have asked for a better family. I will really miss them a lot when I go. I will miss a lot of things, but my experience here has realy given me a new appreciation for the simple things at home. Here I get up around 6:30 or 7, eat breakfast at 7:30, then walk to the bus station. It is about 15 minutes, and is downhill so it isn´t bad in the morning. Then I take the bus for 10 or 15 minutes to my school. I wear my backpack on my front and keep nothing in my pockets on the bus. The bus is the most likely place to get pickpocketed because it is always such a crush of people. We have already had 7 or 8 people robbed or pickpocketed. One guy was pickpocketed on the bus and within one hour, they had charged $3,700 to his accounts (rule #1 do not carry anything of value on the bus!). Another guy was held up at knifepoint at night (rule #2 don´t take the bus at night, or walk alone!). A few other people have had purses or cell phones taken right out of their hands, and one girl was hugged by a woman (she thought it was someone in her family or someone she had been introduced to but didn´t remember)and her cell phone was stolen. I have been pretty careful and don´t plan on being pickpocketed. If it is after about 6pm, I take a taxi back to my house because I am not willing to do the 15 minute walk to the house from the bus station. anyway, back to taking the bus to school. I have class from 8:30 until 12, then either go home for lunch at 2 then do homework and sometimes go out in the evenings, or I go to my service learning for 3 hours. I work at ABEI, which is a foundation/hospital that takes care of adults/the elderly who have incurable conditions or diseases. They have everything from muscular distrophy and diabetes (unable to talk, or use arms/legs, and is missing one leg) to terminal cancer, strokes, and hallucinations. We arrive just before the patients are served lunch, and we help feed the people who cannot feed themselves. It is really hard to see people especially when they have no family to come and visit them. I wish I could do more, but after lunch, most of the patients go to their rooms and go to bed. The majority cannot talk, and those who can are so quiet that it is hard to understand them. But there are a few really interesting people there. It is really a challenge, emotionally, becuse I hate to see anyone having to live a life in a place when they sit, eat, sit, and sleep. We tried to play cards with them, to talk, to draw, to do anything, but the conditions they have make it almost impossible to do much. We make gauze bandages for a large chunk of the time, and find ourselves idle far more that we would like to be. Eventually, I finish and head back to the bus. After I get to the end station, it is back to my house with a 15 minute walk up the hill in the sun. I don´t ever go a day without geting some kind of comment/interaction from the opposite sex. Sometimes it is a whistle, or an ´´hola bonita´´ and other times is is a full up and down look or a kiss in the air. We were told to just ignore it if it happens, so that is what I do. Acutally, on our trip to the beach, another girl and I were walking back to the hotel and over the course of 10 minutes of walking back, we broke 40 whistles, comments, etc. It is definitely a different world as far as that is concerned.... I am certainly not used to that. And one of the women in ABEI told me that I was the most beautiful girl in the whole world. That was nice, at least, but the rest of the comments and sounds I could definitely do without. In the afternoons and evenings I usually do my homework and sometimes go out with the group for dinner and dancing. I am a fan of dancing merengue, but I definitely stick to partners within the group. The Ecuadorian boys are a little too forward and so I stick to the ones who I know and I know I don´t have to worry about dancing with. So that is a bit of my daily life here. More than enough writing for one day, so I am calling it a night.

More Jungle Pictures

The Jungle Adventure!

The jungle was an absolutely unforgetable experience. The hotel we stayed at was fabulous and the experiences were great. I am going to put up the photos now, and give more description tomorrow. We did a jungle hike, built rafts out of logs and one piece of rope and floated down the river in them, we inner tubed down the river, swung of a rope into the river, ate ants in the jungle (they tasted like lemon!), and I was made a queen of the jungle, but I don´t have a picture of that on my camera. I will get my hands on someone else´s camera for more of that. I will give the full details tomorrow, so in the meantime, here are some pictures! There are a few shots of the hotel, one of the dragon blood tree, two from the butterfly reservation, and a couple of me in the jungle!

Photos of the Beach Hotel

After the trip to the beach, and the curving, nauseating six and a half hour bus ride, I got sick. Yesterday was bad, today was much better, but I am still afraid of eating much and throwing it back up. My family here thinks it may have been something I ate at the beach or possibly the ice in a drink. The danger of ordering a poolside piña colada made with freshly shaved coconut, and covered in freshly cut fruit which is made in a third world country, is the water used for the ice that goes into the blender is not necessarily safe for tourists to consume. In addition to being sick, I am painfully sunburnt, I have midterm grammer exam tomorrow and have to climb back on the bus the next day to head for the jungle on another 6 hour curving, cxlimbing, dropping trip. I have no doubt that it will be amazing, but the thought of getting back on that bus makes me feel nauseous already. On a brighter note, the beach was amazing. There was no blue sky, but when the sun broke through the clouds, it made us very happy that we had the clouds. It felt like my skin would burn off it I spent much more time under direct sunlight. We went on a banana boat ride, which was a blast. You throw eleven people on an inflatable tube, drag them behind a moter boat, and throw them off into the ocean and somebody is bound to get hurt. I am not sure if I hit a knee or an elbow or what, but I have a black bruise on my leg. Could be much worse, though. And it was definitely worth the experience. The ocean water was warm and I tried boogie boarding for the first time. Swimming was great, really nice experience to actually be swimming in an ocean, especially when you live in Oregon. We tried freshly prepared ceviche of concha and of shrimp, went dancing, swimming in the pool and the ocean, lounged in hammocks on the beach, and just had a generally fun and relaxing weeking. Granted, a few people started drinking as soon as they got up and ended their night hugging the toilet, they were the minority. The rest of us had a great time without going down that road. Although I did have my first swimming in a pool after midnight experience, which was great. A group of us went in late and the water was just so refreshing without being at all painful. It was a little on the chilly side when first getting in and when getting out, but overall we had a blast. I am only putting up pictures of the hotel because that is all I took pictures of. I wasn´t willing to take my camera to the beach when we have already had around 6 or 7 people get robbed. One girl had her clutch taken out of her hand right outside the hotel. But I am waiting to get my hands on more pictures taken by other people in my group and I will get them on here as soon as possible. For now, be sure to click on the pictures to see the close up, it is worth it. Wish me luck on my test tomorrow, and cross your fingers that my stomach will knock it off!