7/15/2011
11:30 Pm- Going to the bus station to get on our bus to the beach, it will be a total of 9 hours (6 + 3).
7/16/2011
6:30am- Was the worst bus ride of my life. I have a sore throat, the bus was hot and humid. I couldn't sleep also because I was worried we were going to get robbed. (it happens frequently on night buses around Guayaquil). But we made it safe to the bus station and now we board our bus to the Beach in a couple hours! I had McDonalds!!! Chicken nuggets, fries and a coke for breakfast....mmm....delicious!
9:30am- Bus left for beach!
12:30pm-BEACH!!!! SUN!!!! GRINGOS!!!! CERVEZA!!!!!
It was amazing to be at the beach and feel the sun on my skin for longer than 20 minutes at a time between passing clouds! The music was awesome and blaring all up and down the beach with little coctele stands and cerveza being served! I got a little red but not too bad, spent about 2 hours out in the ocean and swallowed a bunch of water. We walked around at night and explored the little touristy town with all the extranjeros. I met a couple from Savanna, GA the guy was an aircraft repairman for the best army in the world for 6 years and the couple both attended GSU (georgia southern univ.) and had just finished a 4-week long anthropology program and had decided to go to the beach like us. They were nice to chat with, we spoke to them for about 2 hours. Then when we were eating dinner we met this guy from Boston who was studying Business in Cuenca, he had two black eyes and we never had enough courage to bring up the topic haha. But he was nice and cool to talk to, he knew that Idaho was the potato state! Wooo ID! We went out for a little bit and drank some beers and then walked along the beach and caught sand dollars!!! That was pretty awesome haha!
7/17/2011
We slept in a little bit it was nice to sleep with the sound of the ocean in the background and not car alarms or buses honking for once!! We went and ate at this little restaurant and had pancakes, eggs, and toast for breakfast. It was delicious the pancakes were more like crepes but hey they were good! They had jelly with them. Today was a fairly overcast day but atleast we had the sun the day before! We lounged on the beach just to be at the beach and played in the ocean a little more because the water is really warm here even without the sun, I mean it is the equator! We are actually spending another night in the hostel because it´s cheap, on the ocean and we can leave for our "poor man galapagos" tour from here in the morning! We enjoyed more sun and skipped dinner with some ice cream and eventually ended up getting a pizza later. It has been fun here in Montañita doing kind of the touristy thing can´t wait for the tour tomorrow!
7/18/2011
Woke up early and had my bag packed so I walked downtown to try and find a breakfast place that was open at 7:30am in paradise! haha there wasn´t anyplace opens the streets had a few people starting to open tour shops and little tiendas with the basics. I finally stumbled across a group of ecuadoreans sitting at a couple plastic tables eating and asked if they had desayuno (breakfast) and they were delighted to share their delicacies with me they had this delicious fish soup with yuca in it (the fish was albacoa?? not really sure) and chifles (banana chips with seasoning) and you put them in the soup like saltines. I must say it doesnt sound too appetizing for breakfast but man was it delicous. So after that I went back to the hostel met up with the others and we headed for our tour. About 40 minutes later we arrived in Puerto Lopez and began walking down the beach to the boats. All the boats were on the beach!?!? they don´t believe in docks here i guess. So our boat was actually already in the water and they kind of pushed it to the shore and we waded through a little bit of water and boarded. There were 15 of us plus 3 crew members on this little 20-25ft boat. Not much room to move around they had us lined up on the bench along either side of the boat and we were ready to take off!
So I sat next to Eric on one side and this british guy on the other he was quite interesting. Used to be a Software analyst for some well known bank in England that merged with one in the U.S. (Lloyd banks??) anyways he was quite the character and a blast to sit next to and talk with on the way out. He had been travelling all of Sur America and had 6 weeks left before going back to Europe. He´d make small british jokes and laugh and I would more or less laugh at him or the craziness of the sound of the jokes haha. Also there was a Swedish family, a Finnish couple?? (i think they were finnish), and a spanish speaking family. I later talked to the father of the Swedish family and he is a professor at a university in some sort of engineering I didn´t quite catch it because of his accent but he´s got a Doctorate student working for google in California and that is where they had just come from! Also I told him I was from Idaho and he said that he´s actually been to Boyss (Boise) haha and took a rafting trip on the snake river! I thought that was pretty cool!! He said he really loved the area and the trip, it was all beautiful. The only thing he said was that he got on this little tinker of an airplane form Boise to the trip and it had TWO WHEELS IN FRONT AND ONE BEHIND!!! haha it astonished him, he thought it was from the 40´s or 50´s, it cracked me up!
Back to the trip, on our way out to the island which is 42km off the coast we got to do some whale watching! we came across a....heard?...of 3 whales all flipping their tails out of the water and what not it was pretty cool! Then it was onto the island, we got there and saw tonsss of birds immediately pulling up it was crazy! We got out and started the "long" 600m walk to the beginning of the trail.
Stop. Think of the galapagos or a tropical island what do you see. Green trees. Birds. Ocean. Cliffs. Tom Hanks. Wilson. Swiss family robinson. Anyways wrong this is a tropical dry forest here at Isla de la Plata meaning there is very little green but it was still enough to make it beautiful! We saw tiny blue flowers in the lower shrubbery and the trees grew over the trail giving us some shade because this far out from the mainland there weren´t many clouds! My feet even got burnt i found out later that night and i even put sunscreen on them!! We got to the point to decide where the trail split into 2 different tours and there was a Piquero pato azules (Blue footed boobies) pair right there!! Holy cow it was incredible!!! The male was doing a little dance and making this whistling sound and the female was "grunting" back. Quite an incredible experience to physically watch!! We took pictures and moved on to let them be and about 50m down the trail there was another pair!!! WOW! they´re everywhere! It kept going like this until we got too a different part of the island a couple hundred meters down the trail. THEN we got to see these huge beautiful birds called Fragata and the males are the ones with the red "balloons" on their chest that they puff up and make this gargling noise to impress the females! and there´s just tons and ton´s of them in one tree all doing this i will post pictures soon!!
Next we got to head back out onto the boat for lunch, sea turtles and snorkeling! and during lunch we got 2 of those things done at once! We were sitting there and all of a sudden TWO sea turtles surfaced around the boat just checking us out to see what we were and then after that a Third one showed up! they were pretty big too! So after that we got to jump into the water and go snorkeling, now I may be spoiled because I got to go snorkeling in Hawaii (thanks mom and dad!) but the "reefs" here were a little different it´s actually brinestone rock. I saw a huge group of Parrott fish and followed them around for a bit, also saw some clown fish, an unidentified that looked like a tiny shark, some starfish, and other little fish! It was nice to be out in the ocean swimming with the sun on my back. After a while I got out and went back on board the boat and did a little tanning and just took it all in thinking about how lucky I was to see these rare species and have this experience! It´s quite amazing indeed!
After snorkeling we headed back to Puerto Lopez and attempted to do a little more whale watching but the whales weren´t as friendly we came across about another 4-5 more but as soon as we got close they just dived off. Oh well we had the one good show with three of them so I was satisfied and it felt good to have a little ocean spray in the face!
Well I feel like this is a really long one so im going to write a second article to break it up! Sorry for the long windedness and detail I´m also using this to help me remember everything or as much as possible anyways! Will post pictures soon!!!!!!
Friday, July 22, 2011
Update
UPDATE! (7/22/2011)
So we´re in our hostal in Quito (the capital of ecuador) and will be flying out tomorrow night! I haven´t had much internet access these last few days and have quite a bit to post so don´t get discouraged i will keep posting articles as I get time to write them. hopefully I will be able to soon so I don´t forget them!! Anyways I also plan on continuing my blog throughout the school year with progress of my report and will post findings/results as I analyze my results for those of you interested!!
So we´re in our hostal in Quito (the capital of ecuador) and will be flying out tomorrow night! I haven´t had much internet access these last few days and have quite a bit to post so don´t get discouraged i will keep posting articles as I get time to write them. hopefully I will be able to soon so I don´t forget them!! Anyways I also plan on continuing my blog throughout the school year with progress of my report and will post findings/results as I analyze my results for those of you interested!!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Ecuador
So tonight we went to play/watch soccer again (eric and I) and when we got there realized it was an actual intramural game against another department. So I didn't play and eric played for a couple minutes to give one of the guys a break! This was quite different than when we had played solely with the Biology department folks because there was an out of bounds! Imagine playing soccer on a basketball court with 7 vs. 7 it was quite packed and the foot work was amazing! Area Biologica won the game 6-4 against a team that was very good!
I'm going to be doing a little bit of reflecting now upon the times that I have had here in Ecuador as the last work week comes to a close. It has been a great time and have had tons of fun I have met so many amazing people here! Those that are native Ecuadorean's and the casual encounter with those that have made there way here from other locations (mostly U.S. and Europe) This reminds me today we went to eat at this "Health nut" restaurant I had a chicken quesadilla (which was excellent!) and as we were getting up to pay a gentleman at the table next to us started saying "Daniel" "Daniel" and I looked towards him with an awkward look and he said "Oh sorry you're not Daniel are you?" I responded with a polite "no" and struck up a short conversation to help ease the awkwardness
Me: "So where are you from?"
Stranger: "Vilcabamba"
Me: and before that?
Stranger: Oh from Canada and California and you all?
Me: From Idaho, Washington, New Mexico all over
Stranger: Very nice have a good time here!
This is a common occurence with the recognition of fellow "extranjeros" (foreigners) especially those that speak english! It has been nice to speak with them and to figure out what brings them to this wonderful country (especially the less popular than Galapagos southern Ecuador). Usually just touring S. America with the occasional ex-pat that has moved down here with their spouse or family. Which brings me to my next thought. Being down here and speaking the language (or trying to anyways) has probably been my favorite part about the experience. Before I always thought it would be interesting to learn another language but actually doing so and using it in an application such as research and communication for travel has made me appreciate it so much more! I want to try and take it upon myself to learn more spanish however it may happen so that I can continue my travels and possibly even starting to pick up on a third language. Not really sure what that would be but definitely would be quite awesome to do! This whole experience has fueled my interest in research and continuing my education both in the field of Ecology/Biology/Social-sciences as well as in other experiences such as broadening my knowledge in general. Well I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get all this stuff back to the U.S. will post more later this week!
P.S. It has been raining since after lunch today and most all of the streets are flooded! On my way back from lunch I was walking and got splashed by a car driving through a giant puddle. It made me a little angry. The clay-ey soil causes the rain to run off and collect but it seems like it has been raining inches and inches all day. It is currently raining right now too.
I'm going to be doing a little bit of reflecting now upon the times that I have had here in Ecuador as the last work week comes to a close. It has been a great time and have had tons of fun I have met so many amazing people here! Those that are native Ecuadorean's and the casual encounter with those that have made there way here from other locations (mostly U.S. and Europe) This reminds me today we went to eat at this "Health nut" restaurant I had a chicken quesadilla (which was excellent!) and as we were getting up to pay a gentleman at the table next to us started saying "Daniel" "Daniel" and I looked towards him with an awkward look and he said "Oh sorry you're not Daniel are you?" I responded with a polite "no" and struck up a short conversation to help ease the awkwardness
Me: "So where are you from?"
Stranger: "Vilcabamba"
Me: and before that?
Stranger: Oh from Canada and California and you all?
Me: From Idaho, Washington, New Mexico all over
Stranger: Very nice have a good time here!
This is a common occurence with the recognition of fellow "extranjeros" (foreigners) especially those that speak english! It has been nice to speak with them and to figure out what brings them to this wonderful country (especially the less popular than Galapagos southern Ecuador). Usually just touring S. America with the occasional ex-pat that has moved down here with their spouse or family. Which brings me to my next thought. Being down here and speaking the language (or trying to anyways) has probably been my favorite part about the experience. Before I always thought it would be interesting to learn another language but actually doing so and using it in an application such as research and communication for travel has made me appreciate it so much more! I want to try and take it upon myself to learn more spanish however it may happen so that I can continue my travels and possibly even starting to pick up on a third language. Not really sure what that would be but definitely would be quite awesome to do! This whole experience has fueled my interest in research and continuing my education both in the field of Ecology/Biology/Social-sciences as well as in other experiences such as broadening my knowledge in general. Well I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get all this stuff back to the U.S. will post more later this week!
P.S. It has been raining since after lunch today and most all of the streets are flooded! On my way back from lunch I was walking and got splashed by a car driving through a giant puddle. It made me a little angry. The clay-ey soil causes the rain to run off and collect but it seems like it has been raining inches and inches all day. It is currently raining right now too.
Last week! (of work)
7/11/2011
Well just re-doing a bunch of my surveys and putting the "Animal" data into excel for analysis. It's been pretty exciting we've been able to do some preliminary analysis of demographic data and the first few questions! I'm excited to be back in less than 13 days!! There were a 101 different plant species named by people in my surveys ranging for uses from food and drink to religious and medicinal purposes! As well there were 65 animal species named by people that had the same range of uses!
Not a whole lot of new happenings we went back to Vilcabamba this last weekend for a birthday party and played volleyball and had a BBQ. It was really good food. But I can't wait to have the wide variety of food available again in the good ol U.S. We also met a guy from New Jersey this past week that runs a 'Street food' restaurant he's got like steak sandwiches and what not with fries. It's really good he made us feel pretty at home except that we're not from New Jersey haha.
Some little things I haven't really mentioned before (i don't think) is that they use the Sacajawea Dollar here instead of dollar bills. Their money is all from the U.S. with the exception that they have printed some of their own .05, .10, .25, and .50 cent pieces! It's pretty cool a couple of the places we go they constantly ask us if we have American .50 pieces to trade for but those are pretty rare to come by even in the states (unless your in Vegas Thanks again for that Dad that was a blast!). I'm looking forward to my pack schedule once I get back into the U.S. all the way up until school starts I've got just about every day planned out!
We leave this friday night to take the midnight bus for 12 hours to the beach so we'll get there saturday morning just in time to hang out and sleep on the beach! Then we're touring poor man Galapagos' and Tuesday night catching the midnight train back to Guayaquil. Spend our last day in Loja wednesday saying goodbyes and finishing up packing then Thursday it's back to Quito where we will climb the towers in one of the churches and then Friday tour the city and Saturday pack up and get ready to head back home!
It has been an awesome trip there's not a thing different I would do...okay that's a lie. I wouldn't have drank the stream water!!! I've lost like 5lbs this last week and am down to my last notch on my belt and about ready to cut another notch. I can now understand why back in the old days doctors would sell parasites for weight loss, it's worked pretty good for me. haha Just kidding. I've got a couple "home remedy" ideas given to me and will be trying those to see if I can kick this. And for all of you who were hoping to see me come back with a Bot fly, I haven't been so lucky sorry to disappoint you!
Hope all is well with everyone I have added more pictures to my photobucket of the zoo and what not! Also there's a construction picture in there I would like to dedicate to my Dad. I'd imagine it was the same kind of work he was doing back when he first started construction using sticks for framing! Haha hope you enjoy it here's the link http://s1085.photobucket.com/albums/j422/raus2120/More%20Ecuador/?action=view¤t=DSCN0731.jpg#!oZZ11QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1085.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fj422%2Fraus2120%2FMore%2520Ecuador%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DDSCN0731.jpg > Be sure to click "Next" to see the second picture.
Well just re-doing a bunch of my surveys and putting the "Animal" data into excel for analysis. It's been pretty exciting we've been able to do some preliminary analysis of demographic data and the first few questions! I'm excited to be back in less than 13 days!! There were a 101 different plant species named by people in my surveys ranging for uses from food and drink to religious and medicinal purposes! As well there were 65 animal species named by people that had the same range of uses!
Not a whole lot of new happenings we went back to Vilcabamba this last weekend for a birthday party and played volleyball and had a BBQ. It was really good food. But I can't wait to have the wide variety of food available again in the good ol U.S. We also met a guy from New Jersey this past week that runs a 'Street food' restaurant he's got like steak sandwiches and what not with fries. It's really good he made us feel pretty at home except that we're not from New Jersey haha.
Some little things I haven't really mentioned before (i don't think) is that they use the Sacajawea Dollar here instead of dollar bills. Their money is all from the U.S. with the exception that they have printed some of their own .05, .10, .25, and .50 cent pieces! It's pretty cool a couple of the places we go they constantly ask us if we have American .50 pieces to trade for but those are pretty rare to come by even in the states (unless your in Vegas Thanks again for that Dad that was a blast!). I'm looking forward to my pack schedule once I get back into the U.S. all the way up until school starts I've got just about every day planned out!
We leave this friday night to take the midnight bus for 12 hours to the beach so we'll get there saturday morning just in time to hang out and sleep on the beach! Then we're touring poor man Galapagos' and Tuesday night catching the midnight train back to Guayaquil. Spend our last day in Loja wednesday saying goodbyes and finishing up packing then Thursday it's back to Quito where we will climb the towers in one of the churches and then Friday tour the city and Saturday pack up and get ready to head back home!
It has been an awesome trip there's not a thing different I would do...okay that's a lie. I wouldn't have drank the stream water!!! I've lost like 5lbs this last week and am down to my last notch on my belt and about ready to cut another notch. I can now understand why back in the old days doctors would sell parasites for weight loss, it's worked pretty good for me. haha Just kidding. I've got a couple "home remedy" ideas given to me and will be trying those to see if I can kick this. And for all of you who were hoping to see me come back with a Bot fly, I haven't been so lucky sorry to disappoint you!
Hope all is well with everyone I have added more pictures to my photobucket of the zoo and what not! Also there's a construction picture in there I would like to dedicate to my Dad. I'd imagine it was the same kind of work he was doing back when he first started construction using sticks for framing! Haha hope you enjoy it here's the link http://s1085.photobucket.com/albums/j422/raus2120/More%20Ecuador/?action=view¤t=DSCN0731.jpg#!oZZ11QQcurrentZZhttp%3A%2F%2Fs1085.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fj422%2Fraus2120%2FMore%2520Ecuador%2F%3Faction%3Dview%26current%3DDSCN0731.jpg > Be sure to click "Next" to see the second picture.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
4th of July Weekend
Hello everyone! So I'm posting this after my day of recovery from the 4th of July! It was a great one, we had a party on the rooftop of Eric & I's apartment building. I made some potato salad from scratch and we had hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, pineapple salsa, baked beans, and some fruit. It was quite fun it started off kind of slow with just 3 of us but quickly after 830 more people started showing up and the fun began! The food was a hit and the pineapple salsa was a hit. I was able to find some Budweiser (the only american drink that I could afford because a bottle of Jack D. was $53.00!!!) and the only thing we were missing last night was fireworks! I might just have to go up to the reservation when I get back to school and buy some fireworks to light off! haha I hope everyone elses 4th of July was great! I was pretty "chuchaki" the next day, but it was a pretty good fourth. Also my land lady who I invited to join the party (actually invited everyone in the building) never came up and actually turned off power to my part of the building and I was escorted to bed after trying to get some water out of her apartment (because I'm supposed to have full 24/7 access to her kitchen which she locks it on weekends and after 10pm usually). I'm quite disturbed by her recent change in attitude she seems to be annoyed, and I even make her a pancake every morning I go in there to use her kitchen. It just seems like she has been slacking on her duties as a landlord in our agreement and its kind of frustrating. Well I got a week and a half left her in Loja then we're headed to the coast to enjoy the beach!
On a side note I figured out what I had last weekend (not this past weekend but the one before). Remember the story about hiking through the jungle and how we ran out of water when I was doing my surveying. We ended up not getting out until 2.5 hours after dark. Well I must've picked up a little parasite called Giardia. Atleast thats what the group consensus seems to be, and I've definitely had some of the symptoms. I guess I'll have to go see a doctor when I get back into the U.S. but until then I will keep drinking lots of water to hydrate and a little bit of beer to try and kill the parasite!! It's nothing to serious but sometimes the body can't kill it and you can get stuck with it for the rest of your life in your lower intestine and you can show the symptoms.
Oh and how could I forget on Saturday we went to the Zoo here and were able to see a lot of the animals that get mentioned in my survey! We saw monos (monkeys), tapirs, oso de anteojos (Spectacled/Andean Bear), Guatusa (most mentioned animal in my surveys and is despised by locals because it eats maiz and yuca), tucans, pava de monte (its kind of like a south american turkey), tigrillo (Ocelote aka tiny little kitty), puma (aka big kitty! haha), and a few birds and snakes. It was fun to go to the zoo it took us like an hour to walk through it and that was with watching the monkeys swing around for a good chunk of time. My camera died halfway through it but I will post the pictures soon! Probably tonight actually! www.photobucket.com/lostintheparamo
Sunday we went to a waterpark that is a 45 minute bus ride and 15 minute taxi ride away from Loja. It's in a neighboring valley over a mountain and the climate there is completely different! There was sun (for a little bit) but it was kind of overcast and windy. I do think that I got a little bit of color and definitely acquired more bug bites! There are a lot more bugs in this valley because of the warmer climate than Loja. Anyways the waterpark was really fun they had this slide there that was awesome! I will post the video of myself going down it....spoiler I kind of get a little bit of air! Anyways I'm looking forward to the beach and coming back to the states I've got 18 more days!
Chau!
Jeremy
On a side note I figured out what I had last weekend (not this past weekend but the one before). Remember the story about hiking through the jungle and how we ran out of water when I was doing my surveying. We ended up not getting out until 2.5 hours after dark. Well I must've picked up a little parasite called Giardia. Atleast thats what the group consensus seems to be, and I've definitely had some of the symptoms. I guess I'll have to go see a doctor when I get back into the U.S. but until then I will keep drinking lots of water to hydrate and a little bit of beer to try and kill the parasite!! It's nothing to serious but sometimes the body can't kill it and you can get stuck with it for the rest of your life in your lower intestine and you can show the symptoms.
Oh and how could I forget on Saturday we went to the Zoo here and were able to see a lot of the animals that get mentioned in my survey! We saw monos (monkeys), tapirs, oso de anteojos (Spectacled/Andean Bear), Guatusa (most mentioned animal in my surveys and is despised by locals because it eats maiz and yuca), tucans, pava de monte (its kind of like a south american turkey), tigrillo (Ocelote aka tiny little kitty), puma (aka big kitty! haha), and a few birds and snakes. It was fun to go to the zoo it took us like an hour to walk through it and that was with watching the monkeys swing around for a good chunk of time. My camera died halfway through it but I will post the pictures soon! Probably tonight actually! www.photobucket.com/lostintheparamo
Sunday we went to a waterpark that is a 45 minute bus ride and 15 minute taxi ride away from Loja. It's in a neighboring valley over a mountain and the climate there is completely different! There was sun (for a little bit) but it was kind of overcast and windy. I do think that I got a little bit of color and definitely acquired more bug bites! There are a lot more bugs in this valley because of the warmer climate than Loja. Anyways the waterpark was really fun they had this slide there that was awesome! I will post the video of myself going down it....spoiler I kind of get a little bit of air! Anyways I'm looking forward to the beach and coming back to the states I've got 18 more days!
Chau!
Jeremy
Friday, July 1, 2011
Quick note
Well I officially finished entering my data into the computer! I have a basketball game tonight with the Biology department team and am pretty excited for it! Let the 4th of July weekend begin!!! Hope everyone has a safe and fun weekend and make sure to light off plenty of fireworks for me! We are planning on going to the zoo tomorrow and to Casa Tinku to watch our British friend play (he's in a band called Laguna Mental) he's kind of a local celebrity Kenny is! Then we will be figuring out the bus schedule on sunday and cooking food to prepare for our 4th of July part we are going to have here with the professors and people in my apartment building on my roof! Hasta luego! Chau chau!
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