Wanderlust

Gina. Vilcabamba, Ecuador.

It´s been a while since I´ve updated this thing. We´ve been pretty busy winding down this leg of our trip. A week from today we get on a plane in Lima for San Francisco. And then we have a few days to see friends and family, apply to graduate school (for Gina) and get some new stuff and leave some other stuff behind. I´ll have to write about the details later when I have more time. For now we´re getting ready to have lunch and go for a three hour spa day in the little town of Vilcambamba in the southern part of Ecuador. Tomorrow night we take a night bus for Peru where we´ll spend a couple of days in Chiclayo going to museums (and breaking up the long way to Lima) and then another night bus to Lima and then on to SF. We´re both very excited about our spa day–something we could never afford back home. I´m going to try to take lots of pictures, especially of Steve getting a facial! I have a lot of pictures of our touristy things around Ecuador to upload, but it might have to wait until we get back to the states because computers are slow and we´ve been both very busy and very lazy.

We had a great time in Banos going to waterfalls and hiking around. I took a lot of pictures of bugs including a creepy spider, beautiful butterflies, and leaf cutter ants (yay!). We never made it into the baths, but that´s okay. Neither of us was that into it. We did go to the little zoo which was neat but a little sad as zoos usually are. We saw Galapogos tortoises which were freaking awesome, toucans and all kinds of parrots, a spectacled bear, lots of monkeys, and a jaguar. We also saw capybaras which are basically giant rodents. They were funny looking and made me laugh and think of the movie Princess Bride with the rodents of unusual size (or something like that).

After Banos we went to Riobamba where we basically just spent the night in order to get up at 6 a.m. and sit on top of a train for the Devil´s Nose. This is a very touristy thing to do in Ecuador as the train system is very slow and not practical for real travel. The allure of this particular train trip is that you sit on top of the train and go down the world´s steepest section of track! It was fun for the first 4 hours or so, but then our bums and our backs were killing us and we´d had enough. The downside of the trip is that if you take it from Riobamba you have a very long way before even getting to the Devil´s Nose portion. And since that was what we thought would be the highlight, we stuck it out all the way. But what a disappointment! We should have gotten off in Aluasi where tons of people got on (and really crowded us even more making things that much worse on the bum) just for the Devil´s Nose section. But the steepest section of track in the world is gotten down through switchbacks so you don´t even notice what´s happening. And the ride from Riobamba to Aluasi was so much pretty than the ride from Aluasi on, and you then have to backtrack back up the mountain to Aluasi after going down the Devil´s Nose which took so much time. We ended up giving up on the roof and sitting inside on the seats for the ride back up. What was supposed to be a five our trip took about 8 since there was a landslide on the track, a train car got derailed, and the whole switching around process of the cars and the engine in order to go back up the mountain was painfully slow. If I would have known ahead of time, we would have gotten off in Aluasi, eaten lunch, and been very happy with the trip. But I think we´re both choosing to try to ignore the last few hours and remember the thrill of sitting on top of a train, seeing Volcano Chimborazo (I think) very clearly. It´s the highest mountain in the world when measured from the center of the earth because it´s so close to the equator which bulges out. It was also fun to see all the kids and adults standing by the track waving at all the white people on top of the train! We were our own tourist attraction!

After the train trip we took a bus to Ecuador´s third largest town Cuenca where we walked around and had a couple of good meals (including a snack at a chocolate bar where Steve had a chocolate beer!) and then down to Vilcabamba where we´ve been relaxing and doing little chores like getting our hair cut ($5 each and really well done!) so that we don´t have to worry about it back in the States.

We´re both really looking forward to coming home for a few days even though it´ll be a little hectic trying to fit everything in. And I´m especially looking forward to China. South America has been nice and a good place for us to learn how to do this type of traveling since things are pretty similar to the States (even though very few people speak English). We´ve gotten a routine down that I´m sure will change a little in practice for China but will stay basically the same as far as how we interact and handle different situations. I´m so excited about good food! I´m going to pig out in the states on dairy products and salads cheeseburgers (no french fries!) and then hopefully will have lots of good food in China.

I´m off for lunch and then it´s spa time! I´ll try to upload some photos and write more later.

Gina. Banos, Ecuador.

Wow! The last week has been a crazy flurry of tourist activity. I´m exhausted! But we have two more weeks of Ecuador stuff planned, so I´m going to have to suck it up and keep on going.

Here´s what we´ve been up to…

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Gina. Bahia, Ecuador.

After our last trip to Puerto Lopez was such a disaster (see post), I had both high hopes and a little trepidation towards this second excursion. We were going back to Puerto Lopez expressly for the purpose of me going to Isla de la Plata and seeing the blue footed boobies. Steve was going to stay back at the hostel and relax for the day since he got very seasick the last time we were in the town (even after taking Dramamine).

Friday started out well, with the Planet Drummers staying in the apartment to do some paperwork (Clay) and clean and prepare the tree seeds we’d collected on Thursday’s hike (Steve, Jamie and me). We were having a short day since Thursday was so very long, and that was fine by me since it was going to be three buses and a total of five hours before getting to Puerto Lopez. We grabbed a yummy fish lunch and caught our first bus to Puerto Viejo which was the fanciest bus I’ve been on so far in Ecuador. They were even playing the new Die Hard movie which unfortunately was dubbed in Spanish, but I basically could figure out what was going on for the parts that I saw. Like most buses this one stopped a lot to let people on and off and the aisles were soon packed with Ecuadorians. I’m really surprised by how the girls dress here. They always look like they’re going out to the clubs with chubby bellies rolling over ridiculously tight pants and very low cut shirts that are too short and brightly colored, often with sequence. I wanted to buy some new shirts here as my two are getting a little worn and it would just be nice to have something new to wear, but I can not find just a normal shirt in this town. It’s amazing. This might just be the beach culture, but I guess we’ll see once we get to Quito and around. Another thing we’ve noticed in general about South America (which I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned before or not) is that people are generally overweight. Kids are generally pretty skinny until about sixteen or so, and then everything has big bellies. I guess it’s all the crappy food they eat. I’m always seeing kids and adults with ice cream, cookies, candy, or something deep fried.

After three buses and lots of napping on my part we arrived in Puerto Lopez which was chilly and raining a bit—a bad sign since I hadn’t brought a rain coat or any warm clothes. We checked into Hostel Maxima partly because Hostel Sol was all booked up (but Hostel Maxima was much nicer with a private bathroom in our room that wasn’t home to billions of mosquitoes like the shared, outdoor bathrooms at Hostel Sol). We’d stayed at Maxima the first night in Puerto Lopez on the previous trip but were kept up all morning by roosters so Steve had us move. This time we thankfully got a room away from the roosters, so it wasn’t so bad (we also kept the windows shut since it was cooler and we had a fan in the room). After checking in and throwing down our stuff we bee-lined to Machalilla Tours which we picked for the tour for the simple reason that they give a 10% discount to SAE members. All of the Isla de la Plata tours from Puerto Lopez are $40 plus the $15 park fee, so the discount made our decision a lot easier. It ended up being a good choice since they even had an English speaking woman (from Switzerland) working the office, so I could ask questions and get a good explanation of what to expect. All of the other tour agencies we’d talked to on the previous trip except for one didn’t speak English. I booked the tour for the next day and other than a minor hiccup when they couldn’t decide whether or not they actually gave a discount (they do) everything went smoothly. We had a yummy dinner of spaghetti—mine with shrimp and Steve’s with a mushroom sauce—and then turned in fairly early since we were both still a little tired from the hike the previous day and we were going to get up early for the trip.

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Gina. Bahia, Ecuador.

Since there had been a few days of on-and-off rain in Bahia, Clay decided that the boys didn’t need to water the trees on Thursday, so instead he decided to go on what we thought was going to be a pleasant morning hike through the hills collecting seeds from some of the native trees that they would then plant in the fall. I decided to tag along since I like hiking, collecting things, and being outside. It was a very hot morning, but I still suited up with my sun hat, long sleeved light-weight shirt, and bandana that is embedded with permethrin (a bug repellent) that I like to wear around my neck so I don’t have to put DEET on my face.

We caught a truck to the same beach area where I went with the kids for our bird watching hike. The land belongs to Ramone, the Bioregional Education teacher and a friend of Clay’s. The truck ride was a fun experience since we actually stood in the back of the truck. These are a common mode of transportation around Ecuador—a regular pick-up truck with a wooden fence built up around the bed of the truck. It was exciting and a bit scary. The Ecuadorian roads are full of pot holes, and even though the drivers are pretty good at swerving around most of them, there were a couple of jostling moments where we all stumbled around the back for a minute. The best part of the ride was when we drove along the beach. It was really a beautiful view with a big, empty white sand beach, cliffs, giant rocks sticking up out of the sand, and the receding waves of the ocean. Steve and I were both a bit sad that we couldn’t spend more time on the beach and instead started right up a very steep, dusty hill trail.

The first bunch of seeds we found were in cow poo. I guess the cows eat the seeds but they either can’t digest them at all or can’t digest them fully, so there were just piles of golf ball sized seed pods that were basically collected for us since they were in neat little poo piles. I let the boys handle collecting these seeds and instead wandered around the path a little looking at the giant mud mounds that were at the base and in the branches of a handful of trees. Clay later explained to me that they were actually termite mounds. Most of them just looked like piles of dark mud, but later on in the day I found one that must have been under construction or recently broken because I could see the tunnel holes as well as some tiny, finger-like mud parts that must have been the beginnings of new tunnels.

After the boys had collected a bunch of the poo-seeds, we continued on through the hills following the same path I’d taken with the kids. Now, Steve and I went into this hike thinking it was going to be a normal half-day of work, finishing just around noon in time to get back, take showers, and grab a cheap set lunch at one of the restaurants or grab some fruit and vegetables and a loaf of bread at the market before it shuts down around one. We knew that we would be hiking through, back to Bahia, and then catching a bus, but we didn’t know just how far and difficult this would be. We ended up not getting out of the hills until around 3:30. I was very tired, hungry, dirty, and unhappy. I just don’t appreciate not being given all of the information I need. Important points that weren’t revealed to us were that we would be hiking way past lunch, that a large part of the hike would not be on a real trail, so we would be bushwhacking through walls of vines and very tall grasses. If I would have known this all beforehand it would’ve have been a big deal. I would have brought more water and food. As it was we only brought a little bread for a snack since we were told it would be a normal day and we’d be back for lunch. I honestly don’t know if Clay just underestimated how long it would take us or what. We did stop a few times to collect seeds or rest that I’m sure added to the amount of time we were out there. But we were going out there to collect seeds, so that time should have been factored in. Anyway, I was mad. And Steve was mad. And we were so tired and hungry that towards the end we started stumbling over all of the vines and roots and everything else. It was also ridiculously hot and humid outside which just added to our general discomfort.

But on the happier side of things we collected a lot of different kinds of seeds and saw bugs and plants that were really interesting. I got some pictures of this crazy grasshopper that was so big and colorful that I actually stopped along a very steep dusty downhill slope to first ask Steve if I was real, and then to take photos. This was one of the last sections of the trip which was basically just sliding down a dusty hill on our butts because it was so steep and so overgrown with branches and vines that it would be impossible to try to walk down. But it was a really cool grasshopper—blue, yellow, and red with spikes on its legs an almost as big as my hand. I also got pictures of a giant spider with baby spiders in its web, a walking stick that was hanging out in Steve’s lap when we stopped for a snack, and a wasp nest we had to walk under along the trail. I saw tons of butterflies, one kind was big and beautiful with bright reddish orange spots on its wings, but they were all too fast and skittish for me to try to get a picture of. But they were really lovely.

By the time we caught the bus back to the house we got quick showers which weren’t even that refreshing since I was literally soaking wet from the hike. I didn’t feel better until I was dry and in clean clothes. Then we walked around town until we found the one restaurant that was still open, even though they were no longer serving the set lunch at 4 o’clock. I ended up getting a not-so-good shrimp and rice (it was really salty) because they were out of my first two meal choices and a really good watermelon juice. When we got back to the apartment I laid down in the hammock and slept until it was dark outside. It was a very long day. I guess I’ve learned from this experience that other people, even people who are supposed to be ‘in charge,’ aren’t always organized and/or considerate of other people and I should ask a lot more questions.

Gina. Bahia, Ecuador

Since we’ve been in Bahia we’ve had a kitchen at our disposal and tons of wonderful fruits and vegetables. We’ve been trying to take turns making communal meals (everyone pitches in $10 at the beginning of the weak for group food and for the giant jugs of drinking water we get) and so I’ve been experimenting with different things. One thing I noticed right away is that while there’s a really good, small grocery store nearby that has a lot of good things that you wouldn’t expect there’s still some gaps in what we’re used to and some things are just really expensive. Olive oil, for example, is ridiculously expensive. And ice cream is also pretty expensive (but the mora—like a blackberry—ice cream at the ice cream place down the street is really good. Really good). The cookies here are mediocre. Even though there are tons of bakeries around, their sweet stuff is kind of weird and not very tasty. So I decided I wanted to make some cookies, but oil is expensive and I didn’t want to use a ton of butter, so I wanted to use apple sauce. But there’s no apple sauce in Bahia. But there are tons of apples. So Sunday I bought a bunch of apples and made apple sauce, from scratch, from a recipe I found on the internet. And it was really tasty and really easy. If only I’d known before how stupidly easy it is to make applesauce (you literally just cut them up and boil the in about an inch of water until they’re soft, then I blended them. Done). And I used my homemade applesauce to make homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

For one of our group dinners I had a craving for pizza but cheese here is really expensive (unless you get the fresh cheese that they make which I find a little strange, and I’m worried it’s going to get me sick again). So I made pizza dough (from scratch, also pretty easy) and then put a tomato sauce on it (also from scratch) and tons of eggplant, peppers, onions, and zucchini. It was really tasty and other than waiting for the dough to rise, didn’t take much actual preparation time. I’ve also boiled a whole chicken and used some of the meat for barbeque sandwiches and I’m going to use the rest of the meat, the bones, and the stock to make soup.

I’ve really started liking to cook since I’ve moved out to California, but not quite as from scratch as I’ve been doing here. It’s really fun. I enjoy cooking. I spent all day Sunday making food and reading while stuff cooked or cooled or in between meals. It was a great day. I want to learn how to can things when I get back to the States. Another thing to add to my list of things I want to do or learn when we get back. It’d be great to take all of the yummy produce in California and make applesauce, apple butter (I really love apple butter but have no idea how it’s made—other than in a big black cauldron like at the craft fairs we’d go to when I was little), jams, tomato sauce, and who knows what else! It sounds ridiculously fun which seems weird to me. But I’ve always loved eating good food, so I guess it’s good that I’m starting to love making it as well.

Gina. Bahia, Ecuador.

This past weekend we went to Canoa, the pretty surfing beach town about 20 minutes away, so that Steve could try surfing again. We had gone right when we first got in Bahia and both of us rented surf boards and went out to give it a try, but the waves were just pounding in and I called it quits about 5 minutes into it without even getting on the board! I’m just not an ocean person. Underwater creatures I can’t see, the undertow, and drowning in general scare the crap out of me, so I’d much rather sit on the sand and read or walk around looking for pretty shells or funny looking crabs to harass. Steve had a pretty hard time that first day, taking a beating from the waves. I don’t think he actually surfed at all that day, just tried to fight his way out farther.

But Saturday Steve had a much better time. The waves were a little smaller and a little more spread out that day, and he splurged for a one hour lesson from a local so that he’d know what the heck he was supposed to be doing. I walked along, carrying all of our stuff, taking pictures and just enjoying the day. It was fun to watch him actually stand up on the board and I got a few good pictures of him up, up, and then gone under the waves. After his lesson he kept practicing for a while and now he has a horseshoe shaped brush burn on his chest from the board and a pretty good sunburn on his back. But he had a good time and will probably go some more. I might still give it a try and get a lesson, but I doubt it. I’m not a very strong swimmer and I can’t hold my breath underwater without holding my nose (pathetic, I know. I blame my mother who can’t do it either and was one of my big excuses for not learning how. 🙂 Swimming lessons is on my list of things to do when we get back to the States and settled down somewhere). I really think that I should stick to snorkeling as my ocean sport of choice (and maybe scuba diving, but that will have to wait until we get to S. E. Asia if ever). I’m just such a good floater. Really, it’s a natural skill. Stephen sinks like a rock, but I can’t sink if I try. And maybe sailing. Sailing seems like it would suit me, but with Steve’s seasickness it might not be a real option.

But we had a fun day. When we got back to Bahia we went to have a $1.50 dinner with Clay and Andrew (Clay is the program coordinator here and Andrew is the only other volunteer right now) which might have been the best pork chop I’ve ever eaten. Then we settled on the couch and watched a movie on the laptop. It was a really nice day. More like home than traveling which was good. We definitely needed this break from traveling—ridiculously long bus rides, a different hostel every couple of nights, finding good and cheap places to eat. And I’ve been well now for the past 2 weeks! It’s very exciting.

Gina. Bahia, Ecuador

It’s been almost two weeks since we arrived in Bahia, and I’ve grown really fond of this town. It’s just an all-around pleasant place to be. People are friendly—saying hello and how are you as you walk down the street; the food is cheap—bananas cost $0.3 a piece, a set lunch with juice, choice of soup, and choice of meat $1.50, a loaf of fresh baked bread $0.75; and the weather is pleasant. Bahia is located on a very tiny peninsula (it’s about 4 blocks wide at the tip) with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Rio Chone on the other. The river is home to mangrove reforestation projects, shrimp farms (including the world’s only certified organic shrimp farm), and a giant frigate bird colony as well as lots of other bird species. Just a short boat and bus ride away is the beautiful, sandy beach town of Canoa where there’s good surfing and lots of beachfront bars. Bahia has a couple of small beaches that are nice to sit around and have lunch or relax, but the real beach life is in Canoa which is fine by me… it means less tourists, less crime, and less noisy nightlife.

Planet Drum is nicely situated in the center of town, just a block away from the daily market that serves all of our produce needs (as well as seafood and meat). We splurged Sunday and bought an entire chicken for $5. It was very good which is a relief because buying chicken that’s just sitting on a table seemed a little scary at first, but it didn’t smell funny or look weird, so all was well. Every morning I have a giant bowl of fruit (pineapple, cantaloupe, kiwis, and bananas) with strawberry yogurt (the yogurt here is more liquidy than at home, which I actually like better). And usually Steve buys a warm loaf of bread from the bakery two houses down.

Originally I wasn’t going to help out with Planet Drum, but it turns out that there’s not much for me to do around Bahia. There are various volunteer opportunities (including Rio Muchacho Organic Farm which I want to go visit some time soon) but nothing that’s cheap and where I could still stay in the Planet Drum apartment with Steve. So we’ve worked it out where I come along to the sites they’re watering that day and work on mapping them and trying to record where there are dead plants or where stakes are missing. I’m also taking photos of the different trees they plant in order to try to put together some sort of tree identification packet, and I help out in the green house with watering, making dirt, replanting saplings, and weeding. It’s been pretty fun, actually. We only work half days—from 8 until noon, 5 days a week—so Steve and I have the afternoons and weekends to do our own thing which, unfortunately, is proving a little difficult since Bahia is a very long bus ride (or 3) from most everything else of interest. I think next weekend I’m going to go back to Puerto Lopez to do the Isla de la Plata trip and finally see the boobies! Steve might come with me for the weekend just for company, but his poor stomach won’t make the 1 ½ boat ride to the island.

We’re spending our free time looking into what we want to do once we leave here (our planned departure date is August 13^th). We have to be back in Lima for our September 2^nd plane back to the States, so we need to plan our last touristy adventures carefully so that we’ll be back in time. We’re especially looking into jungle adventure tours to the rainforest—something that’s been a must for us and this trip. We found a few promising looking tour operators, so hopefully we’ll have that all booked and ready to soon. We’ve also started looking into volunteer opportunities for China. It seems really early to do this, but I think we’re realizing more and more that China is going to be difficult to get around in with no knowledge of Mandarin or how to read Chinese symbols, so we think it’d be a good idea to line up a one month volunteering opportunity for right when we arrive so that we can take some Mandarin courses and get to know Chinese customs a little bit before heading off on our own. But it’s been really hard so far to find anything that doesn’t cost loads of money. It boggles my mind that they cost so much. Something like the panda reserve opportunities I understand since you get to play with pandas, so it’s more like a touristy thing than grunt labor, but paying $2,000 to volunteer as an English teacher is insane! Insane! I just don’t get it. But we’re going to try putting feelers out on some of the travel websites (like Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Forum and Bootsnall) to see if anyone can recommend opportunities that are more in our budget (how about free like Planet Drum!).

I’m not sure if I ever actually explained what Planet Drum does (and I’m really only finding out piecemeal myself). The facts: They’re a San Francisco based organization whose project in Bahia is based around reforesting the hillsides where El Nino flooding and then a massive earthquake caused mudslide and severe damage to the hills, river, and the community. They’ve acquired various tracts of land (I’m fuzzy on whether they own them or if the owners are just letting them reforest the land… I know there are contracts about people not cutting down the trees, so maybe it’s the latter) and they plant native trees before the rainy season (winter—which even though we’re still technically South of the ecuator, they’re on the same summer/winter schedule as the Northern Hemisphere, so yay for being back in summer!) and water them during the dry season (what we’re doing). They also own a green house where they plant seeds they’ve collected and nurture the baby trees until it’s planting time again. Somewhere in there they look for new sites and they also run an ecological school program where kids sign up for 4 hours of ecological courses a week per school term (I think they have 3 terms a year, so 2 small breaks instead of one big summer break) including field trips and nutritional information.

Since the devastation after the earthquake Bahia has tried to rebuild itself as an Eco-city. They have become a model of sustainability with the city-wide recycling and composting programs, the replanting the mangroves and the hillsides, organic farms, and eco-tourism programs. After seeing Peru and a little of the Ecuadorian coast, it really is remarkable just how clean the streets, air, and beaches are in and around Bahia. Walking on the beach was an olfactory nightmare in Puerto Lopez—trash and dead fish from the fishermen was everywhere on the beaches and in the streets.

I like it here. There are still lots of mosquitoes (I have the bumps on my feet to prove it. They love my feet.) and it’s painfully hot sometimes, but if I was more diligent with the bug spray the mosquitoes wouldn’t bother me as much and you can walk 5 blocks to the ocean during the hottest time of day and get an amazing breeze so you barely notice the heat. It’s a nice place. A good vacation from our vacation and a chance to get to know the people of Ecuador a little bit better.

Gina. Bahia de Caraquez, Peru.

We got to Bahia last night and are now settling into life with Planet Drum (the organization Steve´s volunteering with). So far we´ve met the other two people in the apartment and some locals who help out, Steve did a mini day of labor, and we went to the market and had a yummy lunch of homemade (Steve-made) guacamole with chips and half of a cantaloupe. It was yummy, but not as good as our dinner last night at a little oceanside restaurant where we had enough food for 2 more people after eating our fill of seafood rice (Steve´s with shrimpies and mine with tons of squid, shrimp, and baby octopus. I feel a little bad eating baby octopus. I guess I shouldn´t since I don´t feel bad about eating pigs and they´re more human-like in emotions, but I still do. I won´t stop though because they´re really good!). Tomorrow I´m going to try to check out some volunteer opportunities for me and Spanish classes while Steve waters trees.

But this is supposed to be a post about finances. We´ve been really good about keeping track of our spending. I have a little day planner that has really helped. Since I already had our budget broken down by how much lodging, food, and sundries would cost each day (see updated budget post) it´s been easy to keep up with those amounts each day to make sure we stay at or under them. Which doesn´t mean we haven´t splurged from time to time, but my budget has turned out pretty accurate so far so we´ve also ¨banked¨a lot of unused daily budget money that we´ll spend on fun stuff later on. I also took our long-distance travel budget which I had as one big lump sum for the year and broke it down into $500 total for the three months in S. America. And I combined replacement clothes, books and maps, and sourvenirs into one category called Extras and broke it down to $400 total for S. America since they were also lump sums for the whole year.

So, the way we´re organizing things is that on each day block in our organizer we have something that looks like this:

• L (for Lodging)
• F (for Food)
• S (for Sundries)
• T (for long distance travel)
• X (for Extras)

And whenever we buy something we just write down the total and add it up at the end of the day. We then take our daily budget of $32 (for L, F, and S) and figure out if we went over or were under for the day. Then we keep a running tally from day to day of how much we have ¨Banked¨so then we can splurge and not feel guilty. We also transfer the T & X amounts to another page in the organizer to keep a running total of how much we´re spending for those since they´re total S. America amounts not daily amounts.

Here´s how things looked for S. America. Since their currency is nuevo soles we underestimated how many soles were the equivalent of our dollar budget. That way we were being conservative with the exchange rate since it changes. When we arrived it was around 2.6, then it went up to almost 3, then back down to 2.8. We decided to average out that it was about 2.7 soles to the dollar as far as our converting things to dollars in retrospect, but at the time we were working on a low 2.5 exchange rate assumption (we eventually added 6 soles to our daily budget when it got close to 3 soles to the $).

Hopefully for the next month we´ll save a lot of money since Planet Drum is really inexpensive. We´ll need to buy food and anything else we need, but we don´t have to really pay for lodging or any big ¨volunteering¨expenses. So depending on what I end up doing and how much Spanish lessons cost us, we should be able to easily stay way under budget and splurge on some cool jungle time and other touristy things that we´ve done a good deal of but definitely not everything we could have done. I´m looking forward to sleeping in the same bed for more than 1 or 2 nights and just living for a while. Hopefully I won´t get too cranky in the heat! It´s not Alabama quality heat, but it´s still pretty hot and humid especially when you have no AC and no fan! But there are lots of windows in the apartment and it´s on the second floor so it gets a pretty good breeze (or at least it did today). We´re getting closer to the ecuator all of the time and will one day do the obligatory tourist ecuator straddle at the big Ecuador ecuator monument. Steve definitely has a thing for peninsulas since 1) he´s from San Francisco a pretty famous city on a peninsula and 2) he picked Bahia as our place to reside for the next month and it is a much smaller peninsula (we walked around it this afternoon) with the Pacific on one side and a river on the other. He´s just a water guy, I guess. The two other guys in the house are into surfing, so I´m sure there will be lessons or silly attempts in our future. I´ll try to get some good photos of Steve wiping out!

Gina. Puerto Lopez, Ecuador.

Yesterday was a bad day. Things started out nicely on Saturday night. We met a bunch of people at all hostel from all over the world (Spain, Holland, Switzerland, and Australia) and everyone was nice and talkative and we had fun talking about places we´ve been in S. America, future plans, and just chatting. We also learned to play a fun Israeli game called Yaneev (no idea how to spell that) which I was ridiculously bad at. We stayed up late and had plans to get up in the morning and take a boat ride to see blue-footed boobies, whales, and go snorkeling.

But then things went downhill. Neither of us could sleep–it was hot and we had spent a good portion of the evening drinking Argentinian tea with a Dutch guy named Steve who was sort of the center of the gathering. In retrospect I never should have drank any of the tea since I don´t ever really consume caffeine and who knows how much it had in it. And then at some point in the wee hours of the morning I got sick. It turns out that my pharmacy of medication I have to take for the parasite and the bacterial infection all have nausea and vomiting as the first two possible side effects. I spent most of the night feeling nauseous and the rest of the night vomiting. No fun at all. At some point Steve shifted in his sleep and I felt violently ill and I realized there was no way I was going to get on a boat in a couple of hours. I decided that Steve should try to get our money back or reschedule for the next day and if he couldn´t he should go since it´d suck to be out $40.

He ended up getting $15 back for me (which was fine since originally they were going to charge us $25 each but went down to $20) and went on his own. I spent the day sleeping, eating very bland crackers (more bland than Saltines if you can believe it, and they were perfect for my upset stomach), and still taking my stupid medicine every 8 hours. Thankfully I didn´t get sick any more after the night, but I had no energy and felt like crap.

Steve had an adventure of his own. There were supposed to be 4 other people going with Wiston Churchill on his boat. 3 others didn´t show up, so it was just Steve and some other guy. Because they wouldn´t make enough money to cover costs by taking out only two people, they found another tour boat about to leave that would take Steve and the other dude. Why they didn´t just give Steve back his money or try to reschedule us for the next day, I´ll never understand. There were three things that they promised us for the trip: whale watching, snorkeling, and seeing the birds. Their big pitch was that unlike other tour companies that just go out looking for whales and come back as soon as they see them, they liked to tailor to their customers and do more things and have a good time. We were really more interested in the birds and the snorkeling and that´s why we decided to go with them. Steve saw some whales, which was exciting, but that was it. He went out on a boat (where he got seasick, poor thing. We thought he might be susceptible since when we were in Baha, Mexico he got sea sick on a fishing trip but that was after a night of margaritas so we weren´t positive it was the boat that made him sick) and did not get to snorkel which was the only reason he wanted to go, really. The guys just made a really poor business decision. We liked them, we were excited about going with them, and then they pushed Steve off on someone else (who I´m sure they gave his $25 to) and so they made no money and disappointed their customer. How sad.

So, yesterday was a bad day. Steve had no fun. I had no fun. We spent the rest of the day lounging and reading and napping. Today was nicer but still really relaxed. We walked along the beach and then had a late lunch and another nap. I´m still not feeling great, but after tomorrow at lunch I´ll only have the antibiotics left (until Friday). I´m looking forward to no more parasites and no more pills. We´re going to Bahia de Caraquez tomorrow where we´ll hopefully settle down in a nice apartment for a month and start volunteering and unpack our bags for a while.

I think I´m going to come back to Puerto Lopez some weekend over the next month on my own or maybe with a volunteering friend and go to Isla de la Plata. I want to see the boobies, damn it, and take funny pictures of them. Steve isn´t going to risk the 3 hours round trip boat ride, so I´m on my own unless I can find a buddy. But that´s fine since it costs $55 to go ($15 for the island day park pass and $40 for the boat/guide–although I think we get a 10% discount with Machalilla tours with our SAE card) and it´s really for me anyway.

Gina. Puerto Lopez, Ecuador.

We arrived in Ecuador yesterday morning after taking a night bus from Mancora, Peru to Guayaquil, Ecuador. We arrived in Guayaquil at around 5:00 in the morning after getting off the bus 3 times for the border crossing (the bus company was CIFA and for 47 soles each we got bed seats (which were quite comfortable) on the first floor of the bus (which is nicer and less crowded) and they stopped on both sides of the border and waited while everyone got their passports stamped and got their Ecuador travel visa documents. It was a pretty nice bus service and from what I´ve heard about other services where you´re on your own for the crossing (including getting a taxi and possibly getting robbed or worse) worth the money and being woken up in the wee hours to stand in line. My first impressions of Ecuador are all positive. Everyone is very friendly, the bus terminal in Guayaquil was clean, had informative signs telling you where to go for buses to different regions of Ecuador and signs for the bathroom and restaurants (none of the bus terminals in Peru we went to were nearly as clean and well laid out as Guayaquil). It was nicer than a lot of airports I´ve been to in the states. A security guard saw us looking at the poster about buses to different regions and came and asked us where we were trying to go and walked with us to the correct bus company! It was nice and surprising. I´ve gotten so used to being on my guard when anyone approaches me and immediately saying ¨no, gracias¨(sometimes over and over again and having to get rude before the person will leave) while in Peru. I think we were only approached maybe twice in Peru by people who just wanted to practice their English and be friendly, and that was out of probably hundreds of encounters of people trying to sell us something or get us to come to their restaurant.

We took the bus from Guayaquil to JipiJappa (funny name, sad little dusty place) where we changed buses for Puerto Lopez. Both buses cost a total of $3 each! It´s fun being in dollars again, but sort of strange. They use U.S. bills and a mixture of U.S. and Ecuadorian change (the Ecuadorian change is worth the same as the U.S. kind) which is all still silver in col0r and about the same sizes but a lot thinner and lighter. Sacagawea dollar coins are very popular here (which is funny since people don´t seem to like them in the States) as are 50 cent pieces. It´s going to take me a few days, I think, to switch over my head to our daily budget in dollars instead of soles. We´re paying $12/night for our room right now and it seems so very cheap since we were paying about 30 soles/night before. But they end up being about the same amount!

To add to my tummy fun, yesterday I felt just awful. We decided to go to the doctor again, but this time to get a stool test (we read in our Ecuador book that this is the best way to definitely know what bug you have and so you treat it correctly. If only I would´ve known this in Peru!). The doctor and lab technician were very nice but spoke no English, so it was an interesting back and forth with Steve using the phrase book and the doctors speaking slowly and making (sometimes embarassing) hand motions. But we got it all figured out, and after a blood test (we took a lot of time explaining that I was nervous about the needle being new and clean and they went out of their way to prove that it was) and a stool test (which is another whole embarassing tale that I´m just not going to go into here) we found out that I have a not so friendly tropical parasite that burrows into your intestines and sucks your blood, which in turn has caused a massive bacterial infection. So, now I´m on 5 different kinds of medication (on top of the antimalaria pills we have to take once a day since we´re now officially in mosquito land–and I hate the little boogers. Hate, hate, hate them). I take 4 pills in the morning, 1 at lunch, and 5 at dinner. But I´ll be done with all but the antibiotics in 4 days (the antibiotics will take 7). So hopefully this will kill the stupid suckers and I´ll get all better and won´t have any more bad stomach issues for a while. Especially since we´ll be in Bahia where we´ll be staying in a shared apartment and cooking all of our meals (or at least most of them) so will hopefully have less of a chance of me getting reaffected.

Right now we´re trying to plan what we want to do for tomorrow. We got approached on the street by a very nice man who with another man runs a tour company. They´re sort of a small operation but they have lots of books of praise from people who went on boat trips with them and a listing in a French tour book that they had on hand. They seem like a nicer option than the other big companies around which all seem very impersonal and few of them speak English so it´s hard to get an idea of what the trip is like. We´re going to meet back up with them at 7:30 tonight to see if another group of 6 Chilean 20-somethings have decided to book a tour with them tomorrow because if they have a big group they will charge less and have more time to explore around, snorkel, and in general do more. So, we´ll see. They don´t go to Isla de la Plata which we wanted to do, but it´s more like a whale watching trip with snorkeling. They did recommend a company that goes to Isla de la Plata and we went and talked to them, too. So now we have to make a decision. The other company had a man who spoke English and they also do scuba diving lessons and certification. We got to talking to them about that, and now we´re thinking about maybe getting certified. It costs $450 each for 4 days of training and diving (2 days in a pool and 2 days in the ocean). But if we can get 3 other people to do it with us we would get a 20% discount. We´re only a couple of hours from Bahia, so we could try to get a group together there (or through SAE) and then come down some time over the next month for the certification. It would be awesome to be certified because then we could dive in Thailand and all over SE Asia (and Australia if we decide to go there). So, it´d be a big cost but we could potentially get a lot of use out of it. Lots of decisions to be made. I think knowing that we´re going to be living somewhere for a month for really cheap is making us rethink our budget and what we want to do. Potentially we can save a lot of money volunteering for a month in each place we visit and then have that saved money to do something really awesome that we couldn´t do normally on our tight budget.

But Ecuador is really nice. Even though I´m hot (it´s very humid here) and there are lots of bugs and lots of mosquitos, everyone is so friendly and I´m slowly starting to stop my immediate dismissal of people when they approach. I´m still keeping my guard up, but I´m giving people the benefit of the doubt that maybe they´re just trying to be friendly or help. And if it looks fishy or unsafe, we can still walk away. But in general we´re no longer getting beeped at by taxis everywhere we go and no one has tried to show us their menu or try to get us to get a massage. Big pluses.