Mud Colors

I feel like today was Get Back Day up at trail. We went on a long hike into the jungle and did not have any amenities like showers or beds and then today we did a long hike back out. I could seriously taste the lunch chocolate chip cookies during the whole hike. It was a lot longer than our get back hikes usually are. Definitely took a triumphant mud splattered photo once we returned.

These people live literally a 5 hour HARD hike into the jungle. The trail isn't exactly maintained (there were a couple bridges) so it is just a giant mud slide basically. I learned a lot about mud this week. There are many many different kinds. First, there are different colors: white, orange, brown then more interesting like green, purple and pink. There is mud that supports your weight even when you step down hard. There is mud that sucks in your boot and doesn't let you out. (I often felt like the poor horse in the beginning of The Neverending Story...ATREYU!!!) There is mud that clings to your boot so that you have a cement block to drag behind you. Also a note about the jungle boots (they are knee high black rubber boots= do not breathe and smelly feet) but they are pretty much the national shoe of Ecuador everyone in the jungle has them.

So, the cool stuff I did in the jungle. Learned about medicinal plants. One flower numbed your tongue if you nibbled on it a little bit! Then others are poisonous and are used to kill fish for food or worms under the skin. Another poisonous one that is to be used only for emergencies is for like huge machete cuts or bites to stop bleeding but its leaves are very irritating to the skin. Then another if for snake bites and inside that one lives these lemon ants. And they taste just like little bits of lemon. They were really good. You kind of lick them out of this little pod you crack open on the plant. We also hiked to a waterfall. The kids there LOVED the bouncy balls I brought with me and I got to play Equavolley. Like volleyball but...better. Pictures will come eventually. I am packing to head back to Quito and then home. I will miss my host family very much here but I am excited for some food that does not involve rice or plantains/bananas.

Quilotoa and Bus Rides

Hello amigos!

So, I made it all the way to Quilotoa and back. It was an adventure throughout. First, we rode with our family for 3 hours (shuffling two children between laps). We watched How To Train Your Dragon (I loved it again in Spanish). Then we got on a bus and so the buses stop whenever people want and at assigned stops but they dont like make announcements or anything. So, my solution is to make sure everyone in the vicinity of my seat knows where I need to get off by asking loudly each time we stop if this is it. Luckily this plan worked and we got off. Also, the moon is completely full and it lit up the whole landscape. I can't even describe how hauntingly beautiful and lunar it looks because it is so dry and cold there isn't much vegetation.

Then we got in a truck to our hostel. Luckily they still had some food and the fire was going in the woodstove in the center of the common room. It had been hot that day so it was quite a shock to the system to go to the cold.

The next day we set out around the rim of the lake. It is such picturesque country just craggy hills with squares of grain. There were shepherds and sheep wandering the steep hills. One had a cell phone it was pretty ironic. Also, the lake is at like 12,500 feet. So the altitude made it difficult. Every time we went up an incline I had to catch my breath. The terrain changed from moment to moment. Sometimes craggy rocks and sometimes sand like literally sand you would find at the beach to beautiful wildflower lined path. The lake was green though it changed colors as the clouds skimmed over it.

And then, to get home. We took the truck this time riding in the back to the first bus. Then we transferred to another bus that took us part way until we had to get on yet another. So, on the buses they are always playing music and people are selling stuff so I am going to do a stream of conscious example of my typical bus ride.
Maybe I'll practice my Spanish as I ride....what can I get here...your eyes...never leave...always...panflute interlude (the universal language)...song change...ok maybe this time I'll understand..."have to change" (was that you or I, maybe it'll come up again)...your eyes (again!)...love..the words you must...looking out the window: That aloe plant was the size of a Christmas tree!!...And drowning out the words now "Empanada, empanada...helado,lado,helado,cola"

Now you have had the feeling of the bus in Ecuador. Pictures are taking too long to load, you will have to come back. I head to a 3 day stint with a community in the jungle. We have a 5 hour hike into the community! I am excited and a little nervous. Won't be updating until Wednesday because I don't think remote Jungle villages have wifi.

Strange Pets

Hello.

Today I went fumigating for the mosquitoes that carry Dengue and Yellow Fever. Did not find any but we did find some very strange pets...an alligator, a parrot, a huge tortoise and another team found a small version of the flying monkeys from the wizard of oz.

Today I head to Quilotoa. wish me luck on my transfers from car to bus to truck?!

Meters...why America why?

So I have been meaning to post about this problem for awhile. My first day taking height and weight in clinic I was rudely awakened to the fact that I have no idea what the metric system means. Like how many kilograms should a child weigh? So, I could never estimate a starting weight when wailing kids were pried away from their mothers and plunked down screaming every time I would have to start at 0 and work all the way up because I had no idea what 20 kg even was close to as the kids wailed for mom. Or centimeters for height? Why did America do this to us? I am getting a little better but when we were comparing how much we had gained from eating a plate of white rice every meal I was convinced that I had gained 20 pounds until I found a calculator and someone more informed. (It was only 4 pounds luckily). Don't even get me started on actual thermometers with like ...mercury? really? in them. I had to be shown like everything on how to use one of those. It doesnt even beep at you to let you know it is done! No one had a fever because I wasn't patient enough to let the mercury (seriously?) move all the way.

On a more recent subject today we drove a long way to find some bugs. We found like 6 bugs, more specifically Chimburi bugs (I think). We also found a scorpion and the largest cockroach I have seen in my life. It was the size of my hand. It was in a woodpile but oh my it was huge. We did some excellent gravel road driving. It is kind of nice here because like estimation of travel time never really depends on traffic...(double yellow line means wait until you are out of the blind curve to pass, por favor)...it depends on how quickly the driver wants to power slide in and out of curves on these gravel roads. There are also speed bumps on large roads between cities...that would not go over so well in the US I decided. But Dr. Torres liked to use those as a kind of green light for the drag race to pass other cars.

Doing very well overall, one more morning with the Infectious Disease Control.

This weekend I go to Quilotoa. To a volcano crater lake that locals say has no bottom. It is supposedly very cold so I might have some alpaca wool pictures in the future.

Diabetes in Little Old Ecuadorian Ladies

Hey team.

I am tired today. Today we did blood pressure and glucose screening at the Diabetic conference in Puyo. We did a lot but were not super busy all the time, it came in spurts. I had some issues with Spanish today. It is a lot of active listening. You know you are fluent when you can eavesdrop. For me to eavesdrop takes so much brainpower it is not even worth it. And eavesdrop. what a strange word, so glad I don't have to learn English.

The best part of the day was watching a theatrical production put on by the ladies in the diabetes program here. They keep track of their numbers and have exercise class. They were the cutest little things you have ever seen! They were cracking on how tough the doctors were and how they couldn't eat anything. I mean poor things every meal here is white rice with a side of potatoes or starchy yucca with a piece of meat and then a fried starchy banana/plantain for dessert! Oh and juice with sugar added.

The diabetic talks are particularly rough in the clinics. They do not leave happy. Anyway them dancing their little dances made me happy!

Tomorrow I catch bugs that carry Chagas! I am so pumped. No really how could I be such a nerd. Gotta DEET it up.

Jungle Living

Hello friends!

Hopefully you are all doing well. I just had an amazing time exploring and learning about the culture of the people who lived and continue to live in the jungle. Yesterday we took a taxi (which are yellow trucks in Puyo, I suppose to make drives like this one), to a hike, to a canoe!, to a beautiful thatched roof home by the river in the jungle. I had such an amazing time. We had beds above a lower room with hammocks and a long table for eating. I actually got a splinter immediately on the handmade canoe and Manuel, our guide, dug it out with a new leaf just as strong and sharp as a needle. We went on a nature walk both days and learned about medicinal plants (like plants made into teas when babies are sick with vomiting or bark for snake bites.) Then we tried different foods as we walked around. My favorite was a mushroom that looked like an ear. We also tried pineapple of the jungle, heart of palm, a fruit that tasted like a coconut but with black seeds, water from an bamboo stalk, sugar cane of the jungle and actual raw sugar cane. Then I tried a live beetle larvae that are supposedly very good...it was not, the head had a pleasant crunch but a not so pleasant taste, maybe just unfamiliar then the body was chewy. I couldn't swallow it but just spit it out. But I tried it so that is more than the others would do.

Basically I rocked out at the jungle. Our other activities were basket weaving from a palm branch (I thought of Granny, someone please tell her), swinging from a vine just like Tarzan!, playing the flute and using a blow dart gun. (I was the only one to hit the banana that we were aiming at!)

I would definitely recommend this adventure to other people. Our guide had a great sense of humor and his family and kids were really cute! I gave them some bouncy balls. The wife, Vanessa, who I think is only 23 cooked our huge lunches over the fire. They have like a grate with a fire underneath. I can barely cook rice on the stove...but a huge vat of rice over the fire!! Manuel also had made basically everything there by hand from the houses to the roofs to the furniture, to the hammocks!

It was so much fun just hiking around and exploring. It was amazing because I didn't recognize a single tree or plant. Everything was new and exciting. I love the huge leaves of the palms and banana trees. There are palm ferns as tall as 5 people. There are the biggest palm trees you could ever imagine. And by far the biggest leaves I have ever seen. Bear Gryls would be in heaven there seemed to be so much to eat and drink. Yay fun walking around in the wild made me want to come up with a group name and put it on a pillowcase.

Tomorrow is in town at the diabetes clinic.

Whitewater fun!

So when we arrived in Tena it immediately started to pour rain and did not stop until Sunday. It rains in the rainforest...who knew.

We struggled to get a taxi to our very nice hostel. Incredibly clean and definitely the best shower I have had in Ecuador. It was hot the whole time with this amazing water pressure. It was an electric showerhead but apparently I have tamed it. Or maybe my standards were lowered in Arajuno's accommodations without any hot water at all. It was wonderful...then we switched rooms the next night to a private room with alternating burning hot/freezing cold cycles...can't have it all.

But on Saturday morning we went rafting. We were going to do Class IV but all the rain had made it too big and dangerous so we did Class III instead but it was amazing. The water was huge. All the rapids weren't so much rapids as like choppy water followed by huge waves formed by giant rocks underneath. I sat in the front of the boat and it was amazing. I would stare at walls of water 8 feet high and think oh dear just don't fall out of the boat and we would break through with a spray of water. It was soo much fun. Then we took a nap and went out to check out the local discoteca nightlife. We made some local friends and they helped me put my salsa class to use...though with merengue and others thrown in I don't know if I really did my teacher justice. All the guides and local people were out. So it was really more Ecuadorians than dried off gringos after a day of rafting.

We just headed home the next morning after breakfast. Bus ride took a little detour when we missed our stop! The bus didn't go where we thought it did, but thanks to some quick thinking by yours truly we got headed back in the right direction.

Made it back to do some laundry before heading to an indigenous Kichwa community tomorrow.