El fin de mi viaje

Hard to believe but my epic adventure over here ends this weekend. It has certainly been everything and more  that I could have hoped for. I guess now all I  can do is reflect on my amazing time here and relish in my memories, photos and international amigos. I am oh-so-sad to leave but oh-so-happy to return to my beloved city full of all the people I love. I must say that through the internet I found that I didnt´feel so far away at all, and thank you to all the beautiful people emailing and keeping me sane and reminding me what a beautiful life have to come back to in Seattle.

When I set out for Ecuador I wasn´t really sure what to expect. All i really hoped was to come back in one piece with a little more world and travel experience and some knowledge of Spanish. I will admit I am coming home with less language then I hoped, but i feel the book has been opened, and my journey toward fluency begun. After two frustrating months of incomplete comprehension i am determined to keep studying, and continue to progress so that WHEN i return I will be able to connect with South America on a much deeper level. 

I do not know precisely when I return to this continent yet, but depending on what I find, a strong part of me would like to return here within the year for work. There are lots of options for teaching English, but also if I am lucky there are, though few and far between, some paid volunteering positions, or at least free, where you are not paying to Volunteer, as I have been doing on this trip, pretty standard.

The people of Ecuador have been amazing.  All the amazing, warm, generous, friendly, and helpful people of this country have left me with a feeling of a warm embrace. Easily excluding all the individuals who did try and sometimes succeed to rip me off, mainly taxi drivers, which in the end it was like paying for practice as they were some of the best people to have basic Spanish conversations with. A typical scenario: You get off the night bus, and be all kinds of tired hot mess needing to find a hostel, it´s usually 6:30 in the morning, immediately you are swarmed by Taxi drivers who are all shouting at you simultaneously, since you aren´t exactly sure where you are, you decide okay 2 dollars sounds great, lets go, vamos, and you get into the taxi and the taxi driver proceed to excessively disorient you with the place you have just arrived by driving in circles and the opposite direction of the center of town because you had really been only six blocks away from the street with all the hostels and in reality had not needed to pay for a taxi ride at all. Whatevs though

The comida of Ecuador. So good and so bad. So the same! Everywhere. I stayed with three different Ecuadorian families, one in the big city, one up in the Jungle and one down on the coast  and thus ate the cooking of three wonderful Ecuadorian ladies, all grandmothers. Their food was identical, all sopas, rice, fried potatoes, steamed vegetables, salt, and then a little bit more salt. With some salt on the table should you somehow find the salt level insufficient. In general though, it´s all been tasty, but I think I have had my white rice and fried food quota filled for a life time. However here in Quito, when foraging for food on my own, I have had little trouble finding vegetarian options, it has been very excellent.

I could happily stay here 100 more months, but a few things I will admit to looking forward to upon my return to the US: a hot shower, toilet paper in  the bathrooms, being able to put toilet paper in the toilet and not the adjacent bin (that was actually a hard habit to break here, I was in constant fear of clogging toilets when I first arrived) and....I guess cooking my own food. Ecuador is great though y´all, you gotta come check it out!

I have returned from Banos, which was excellent, probably my favorite little city that I have visited on this entire trip. The one place that really made me wish I had a friend from home to explore it with. It was total adventure city with 101 things to do. Bridge jumping, river rafting, horseback riding, zip lining, hiking, bicycling, hot springs, the best restaurants I have experienced, the cheapest hostels, and tons of spas with the lowest price lists I have ever seen. And! On top of all that I happened upon the city right at the beginning of the celebration of the founding of the city, so just like in Quito there were fireworks, live music and dancing, and then of course the 5 hour parade with every school band or group from a 50 mile radius. 

I am not the best at taking photos, i seemed to never have my camera, my iphone, at the right times, or would be too slow getting it out of the case and miss the moment. None the less I managed to capture some of the good times and after patiently waiting for these photos to upload at the internet café on this incredibly raining Friday afternoon in good ol´ Quito I can share them with you before even returning to the USA. I feel like there will be hardly anything new to share with anyone when I get back since all my photos and stories up are on this blog. But that's impossible and far from true. Here it feels that every moment, every experience, every personal encounter is significant and there have been so many amazing small moments that did not catch fame on the blog.

Okay, some visuals!

My first night in Quito! And here the first ten minutes in my homestay. This was my adorable little room. And that is my ENORMOUS suitcase that I had no business bringing, and ended up filling with all the extra unneeded items and leaving it in storage at my spanish school for the better part of my time here.

Here is just  a beautiful blue town house in Old Town Quito, El Centro. Looks so European, don´t you think?

Just looking down from on of the many many hills in Quito, El Centro

This was the beautiful view I had every time I turned the corner on to my homestay family´s street in Quito upon returning from my Spanish lessons. Lessons were finished at one, so rarely did I come home at Sunset, this day I must have been hanging around with kids from school or walking around Quito before coming home.

My family´s house had an amazing rooftop patio/deck and here is the day time view. Some afternoons I would sit up here after school and work on my spanish homework.

Here is the same view from the rooftop deck at dusk.

Ecuadorians love their grafitti, artistic and political

The city sprawls before you, I must have 50 pictures of the city like this.The first three weeks in Ecuador I had no pictures of people, just inspiring landscapes.

Here is a picture of the Angel, sitting up on one of many rolling hills. She looks small in this picture, but it is a magnificant statue watching over all of El Centro

The kitchen in my Quito homestay family.

This is a picture taken from the very top of the Angel in El Centro.

This is one of the few pictures I took during our little weekend vacation to Atacames, the northern beach town in Ecuador, a popular destination for Ecuadorians.

I think I cut the head off the one in the middle. Gnarley.

The guinea pigs! De-hairing them was such a mess.

But not as messy as gutting them, yet gutting these guys was far easier and simpler than the chickens. And thats Kixie one of the many farm dogs, she later found the innards and ate them. Yummers.

Here is Simon in the kitchen up on the farm making one of the most delicious meals that I had up there. This kitchen was always being cleaned and eternally a hot mess.

Freshly baked bread from Simon.

Some roaming farm animals with their babies.

The farm in the morning light.

The two baby calves. Adorable and daft.

Tidy little rows of lechuga!

Entry into the stables.

Typcial booth full of handicrafts.

The best cup of coffee I had in all my time in Ecudaor, finally real expresso instead of instant freeze dried coffee. I had two cups.

The enormous fire we made my last night at the farm.

Watching the big fire burn.

On my way driving up to Puyo, Cotapaxi, the volcano was erupting, as it frequently does.

More Yanacocha animal pictures, the Ocelot, pacing her cage.

These kittens were so awesome, and SOOOOOO beautiful.

Emma the monkey.

Spider monkey inside the cage, crazy squirrel monkey outside the cage, both with their eyes on the prize.

Christina and Nikkie, hanging out in the cutting room getting all the fruit ready for the afternoon rounds.

Titi Blanco

I forgot to mention that I got to go to another soccer game during the weekend of the festival de Quito. It was a big match, the looser getting knocked out the cup, it was a cup for just the country of Ecuador and Quito´s team, LIGA won, but I guess each city can have up to four or five teams, especially big cities. I went with Allie and her Quito homestay family, so the son was trying to explain the league and point system to me, didn´t catch it all though. The guys you see up there on the fence are the ones getting ready to release the fire extinguichers once their team´s members enter the field.

The smoke you see there is from the other team´s fans releasing their fire extinguishers at the start of the match.

Teleferica is this awesome Gondala that takes one up 4000 feet, up top the hills on west side of Quito for absolutely spectacular views. I was fortunate enough to go on a spectacularly clear and beautiful day.

Here is Quito

Most typical Tienda. Just selling all the worst foods for you. One word, processed. (nevermind those Avocados, seriously, I don´t know what they are doing there, very rare.)

Beautiful church in the middle of Marscal Sucre, Quito.

Gorgeous beach in front of the town Estero de Platano

My room on the second floor at my homestay in Estero de Platano.

More beautiful beach shots

ooh lala.

The river the came down through the jungle to meet the ocean, also where i washed my clothes with Emeritus, my homestay Mama. It´s hard to see but these little boys have been left the charge of pushing the boats up stream. Even though it is the wet season the river was very low the week I was there, these boys were all like seven and probably weighed less than 50 pounds. After taking this picture I got my booty in gear and helped them out.

A treat for breakfast, two grapefruits. Instead of two fried empanadas, which I was getting filled with nothing since I´d told her I was trying not to eat meat or dairy. They are peeled and cut that way so that you can just squeeze the sides to release the juice and then drink from it like a cup.

The kitchen. Where the salty magic happens.

Nik and Allie, the two volunteers from Yanapuma, living down in Estero de Platano for 9 months in total.

One of the two roads going through the main part of town.

Banos. Gorgeous and green.

One of the most typical sites of Ecuador. Juice being sold in a little cart like that on the side of the road.

Other delectable street food. I need to get a picture of the street meat carts, verrrrrry popular. Haven´t had any, but I hear it´s the shit. Just watch out for the post street meat poo blues!

Drill team girls posing just after completing their round in the city parade.

Drill team girls in action. Work it.

Pack of dogs. So many dogs. Bob Parker´s message has not reached South America yet it seems.

My awesome shoes!! These badboys were 15 dollars at payless and I don´t know how they have held up for this whole trip, I have worn them everyday taking me everywhere I needed to go. Love you feet and shoes, thanks for the good times. Same with those pants!