Day XV- January 16th, 2oo7- Overtime
The alarm went off at 7AM, we finally got everyone up, moving and out of the hotel by 9AM. We took two separate cabs to the Malecon. Apparently there was some confusion and half of us made it to one destination, the other made it to another. Both groups waited. We made it to the steps of Cerro Santa Ana: a famous historical center of Guayaquil. There are little shops and artisan places all along the 444 steps to the top. At the top there was a chapel and a beautiful view. By the time we made it up the 444 steps, we were exhausted from the major lack of sleep and the oppressive heat. We wandered around a bit, enjoyed the view and stopped off in a couple of shops.

Shot of the waterfront

The boys obviously had more energy than I did


Aaah, the last step



The chapel at the top



Darian and his pirate friend


The river- the wet season is coming. This was actually really interesting to watch because you'd expect the water to be moving, but the chunks of grass are really floating down the river. It only really occurred to me when I was reading Our Daily Bread and they were describing how they could tell the rainy season was coming- "Big islands of grass went traveling down the stream...seen from a distance {it} made it look as if the water were boiling."


Pretty gateway out of the historical area


The walk back down

We didn't have too much time to spare seeing we were expecting to depart somewhere between 1o and 11. We found our way back down to the main road, caught a cab and within ten minutes of getting back to the hotel, we received a call to pack our things, check out and meet in the lounge. We quickly cleaned up everything and ran downstairs.
Our bus picked us up, drove us to the airport and we got in line for a moment of truth. Would we get on this plane? They were offering people $5oo to not get on the plane. (Once I arrived to the frigid cold of NYC, I regretted not taking that $5oo!) We did finally get on the plane, checked our bags with no complications, boarded and headed back to New York. The flight was amazing- brand new with individual television sets- with all brand new movies, video games and television shows. I got an excellent seat at the front of the section with crazy amounts of leg room. The six hours flew.
We finally made it home, exhausted, we were coaxed to stay the night and drive back to Marist the next morning. The semester was jump started with a day lost and a ton of work waiting for me. It was worth every second of it though.

Day XIV- January 15th, 2oo7
We were up bright and early the next morning - our bags at our door ready to be picked up and ready to check out of the room. The bills at the front desk were in horrible order and completely inaccurate. We ate breakfast in shifts as we took turns at the desk settling our debts. The resort had given us a great deal of grief and were happy to get out of there.
The bus finally shoved off- just as overpacked as it had been on the way there. I was in the back, packed in with luggage on my feet and a person on either side of me. Fortunately I fell asleep within five minutes of our journey.
The next time I woke up we were in Quito, back at the airport again. We got our tickets, payed our taxes, went through customs and sat down to wait for our flight to board. We waited, and waited, and waited. At the time we were supposed to depart came, 12:15, they announced that the flight would not be taking off, and that we were to wait until they made announcement at 2:15 (they didn't say what they would announce, just that they were going to announce SOMETHING). We were given meal tickets for the time being and our selection was narrowed to "Chicken," "Chicken," or "Some mystery meat-like product that we'll just call Chicken" because we were the last of about 200 people to eat. We played trivia, cards, and did various other things to pass the time. At 2:15 they said the plane was broken and that they weren't sure what was going to happen. At 3:15 they announced that we were going to depart at 6:15 to Guayaquil. Officially, at 5:15 we left for Guayaquil where we were to be considered "En Transito" and they were going to bring us to a hotel for the night, where we would be brought back to the airport the next day in hopes to fit us on the same flight.

Matt relaxing in the airport

Sounds good to me- 5-star hotel, for free. 5-star dinner, for free. A night in a city that we had landed in four times and never got to see, for free! What was there to complain about?!
The 5-star dinner was quite possibly the best meal of my life. We each got separate rooms- no more roommates! We quick ate our dinner and hailed a cab to go to the Malecon (basically the boardwalk of Guayaquil). Six of us piled into a very small cab.

Three of six of us...in one very, very tiny cab

We arrived at the Malecon and wandered around for awhile. There were fun bars and restraunts- tons of culture all over the place. The entire walk was strewn with statues- one which commemorated a figure Matt had done a great deal of research on. He had done so much research that he knew that this statue had existed in this city before we even arrived. We searched it out and finally found this statue of Simon Bolivar and San Martin.

He was in awe- in his absolute glory


They needed a closer look...


Justin, Mateo, San Martin y Simon Bolivar


Matt and Darian in front of a Techno-colored Pirate Ship

We walked around for over an hour. When we decided we were about set with everything we had seen, we hailed a cab back to the hotel. We searched for a good bar or club, but everything our hotel seemed very...closed. We found an alimentacion and headed back to the room to play some cards. We recapped our trip, had many visitors and reflected on the good and bad. We all collapsed around 3Am.
Except for Chinito of course...he passed out way sooner than the rest of us:


We decided that we were only in this city by chance and that we doubted we would ever be back, so we set a wake up call for 7am the next morning to see the rest of what we wanted to.

Day XIII- January 14th, 2oo7
The chirping insects turned into screeching birds at about 5AM. I woke up, walked around a bit and decided it was lonely at that hour, and headed back to bed. Around 8AM, Matt and Darian knocked on the door, ready to start the day. We found our way down to breakfast, ate nice and slow and relaxed. There was a hike schedueled to depart at ten, so we just wandered around for awhile. We spent a while playing with one of the parrots who hung out outside the reception hut. We each took turns holding the bird- watching it walk up eachothers arms. Of course when I finally held the bird, it projectile pooped with a vengence upon me! And I didn't even get my picture taken with it!!

My boyfriend, Peter Pan, with the projectile pooping parrot (be impressed with my alliteration)

We were the first group to leave on the hike. 15 of us hopped in a van and went to a private area about five minutes away.
We were ready to get muddy and dirty. The path was gross- so many people fell from walking up muddy hills. I "gracefully" saved myself several times. We walked through rivers, over crickety bridges over rivers, through over-grown jungle and cleared cattle areas. Our guid talked to us about the wildlife and plantlife.

"This fruit is called...fruit. They couldn't think of a more creative name"


Today, tomorrow and forever/ Yesterday, today and forever- named for their constant changing shade of purple

We finally arrived at one of many waterfulls. We were all hot and sweaty and out of breath from the altitude. When we found out we were able to swim at this one, we quickly stripped down to our bathingsuits "inside" our clothes. We all jumped into the very chilly water. Some people swam to a grotto under the waterfall. As soon as I heard rumours of jumping off the waterfall, I literally ran up the hill. Myself and two others climbed up the steep, messy slope, hanging on to vines, trunks...anything. We were filthy and sweating. Nearly at the top, I saw a pod of some-sort completely covered with big black ants. Being in my path, I grabbed the top portion of the leaf it was attached to and pushed it out of my path to avoid their path. Obviously this did not work considering a few seconds later I was screaming and covered with them. Being in my bikini, I was an easy target. They got my thigh, my hip, my armpit and a few got into my top. They were probably the most painful bite I have ever experienced- definitely worse than a bee-sting. We were still determined to get to the top of this waterfall, so I took a deep breath and trekked on.
Apparently we took the long way to the top (and obviously the more dangerous) considering the guide and another group had already gotten up and jumped off. The guy who was part of our three who climbed with us had already jumped. The only two left up there were the guide, myself and another girl, Kate. Kate had jumped off a waterfall before; however, she looked over the edge of this one and lost a bit of nerve. She backed off and I moved forward. My nerves were shot. Between the ant attack and standing 3o' above a strong moving body of water, I almost backed down. Everyone below was watching and I knew that this was a dream, a goal of mine: to jump off a waterfall. I asked for a countdown and held my breath. It was absolutely amazing- the thrill of it, the rush of adrenaline...everything except the pain of your body hitting the water from a 3o' drop.

The smaller of some of the waterfalls we saw on our hike


So I'm supposed to jump, from here?


YEAHH! She did it!!!


As we can see in Sample B, Matt did not fall quite as gracefully

My bites were absolutely horrible at this point. They were massive bumps and bright red. The one in my armpit was the worst- I could barely put my arm down. I told the guide and she said I was fine- that if I could just wait until everyone was ready to leave and we would get something to put on it to make the swelling go down.
Matt decided to jump as well- he landed a little harder than the rest of us- on his butt.
We hiked back up to the start of the trail. When we got to a hut, they informed us we would be making cane sugar. They gave me some alcohol for my bites before we started. Matt was a mess too- he hurt his neck when he jumped and was still shaking from his nerves. Once you got to the top of that fall, you had to jump- there were too many people watching to back out.
The sugar cane thing was a bucket with machinery over it which pressed the cane and forced the liquid out of it. It was a manual process which involved at least three people. We got to drink it afterward- it tasted amazing- almost like iced tea, but so much sweeter.

This sugarcane
This lemonade
This hurricane, I'm not afraid.
C'mon, c'mon no one can see you cry.

We met up with the van again and headed back to the resort. When we got there, I got medication to reduce the swelling on my bites. I also asked the director about Matt's neck. She gave him an anti-inflammatory and Arasha being a Spa-Resort, she sent him over to get a 15 minute massage for free- which turned out to be more like 3o minutes. (Lucky!)
After our catastophes were taken care of, we headed over to another hut where we were having group chocolate making. We missed the first part, but after the grinding, we added water and boiled the shavings, added vanilla extract and brandy and tons of sugar. It was quite possibly the best tasting chocolate I've ever had. They poured it hot over banana slices. I think I may have literally licked the plate. (Well, considering we didn't have any lunch...)

Step one: Grind

Mmmm...I like making chocolate in the middle of the cloud forest


Prize to anyone who can identify this strange lookin' thing!

When chocolate making had ended, we had our hearts set on craft time, but we couldn't find the shack at first- then it turned out it was cancelled all together. There were not to many things left to do at the resort aside from swimming. It was too hot to play mini-golf outside, we weren't able to go horse-back riding because they only had six horses and they were already occupied, and the pool was occupied with adolescents. We opted to play billiards in the salon. We played several rounds and Matt, Darian and I decided to go for a walk to the mirador.

I chased some chickens around the garden- I'm not quite as mean as my father though



Little lizard-lizard

There were pretty flower gardens and a hummingbird garden. There was a gazebo that looked over the whole resort (that was the technical mirador). We sat in the hummingbird garden for awhile waiting and trying to take a picture of one. We were relatively unsuccessful except for this one:

Trust me, that little black blurr is a hummingbird

Pretty flower we found on the way out



Another pretty one



Would we hate pollen as much if ours was hot pink?


Interesting looking one, eh?

We wandered around a bit more before we headed back to the main part of the resort. We opted to go for an early dinner that night, to avoid the crowd of the 6o adolescents. After dinner we all went for our last swim of Ecuador. We hung out for awhile in the jaquzzi, hopped back to the pool when it got too hot in the grotto, back to the jaquzzi when it go to cold in the pool...
After we were all water logged, we went back to our huts. On the way back, we stopped to play with a kinkachu (sp) that was in the "animal rehabilitation hospital." The little animal was so cute. We were feeding it watermelon and different fruits. He would lick our fingers and hold on with his little hands. He entertained us for almost a half an hour.

Mr. Kinkachu

We decided to get back to our rooms, pack, change and get ready to leave for the next day. We headed back to the boys' hut to play some cards and listen to some tunes. We had a ridiculously fun time playing asshole and we had many visitors. We were enjoying our last night in Ecuador, but we were also all ready to get home.

Day XII- January 13th, 2oo7
The first day at Arasha was an interesting one. We arrived at about 11AM, checked in, found our "rooms"- which were technically glorified grass huts. We got ourselves situated- sprayed tons of bug repelent over everything, and found our way back to the main part of the resort. We got complimentary welcome drinks, had some lunch (not complimentary) and checked out our list of activities. The one which sounded most appealing..."Catch Your Own Dinner!"

My little grass hut

We were totally pumped with images of hopping in the river and spearing giant fish and coming back with our hands full. The reception desk gave us a bag of raw meat (we laughed and said it wasn't nearly enough for so many of us) and directed us to the fish pond.

Mmmmm...Ashley with some fresh bait

We arrived and laughed at the size of the pond. We remained optimistic and baited our lines (which were attached to a 15' rod of bamboo) and waited for something to happen.
Out of 1o of us, 3 caught fish. I got a real winner- it was almost 3" long! The biggest was probably 6".

Hidden pictures(!): find my fish

In the mean time, I was intrigued by the sound of running water down a path by the pond. Myself and two others went to explore. After five minutes of a downhill path, we found the water source- a pipe. The pipe flowed into a pool where the water was sitting. Justin tried to go fishing in the pool but we eventually decided we were unenthused with our discovery and headed back up the hill. Because we were at such a high altitude, it was extremely hard to breath.
Back at the pond, we fooled around a while longer, found some frogs that were smaller than and close to the size of my finder nail. We ended up just feeding the bait to the fish and went to find more exciting things to do.
Matt and I went for a walk down a trail to the (real) river. It was very un-natural- a dam to create a waterfall, walls built to contain the river, lounge chairs set up for sun bathing. Not to say that it wasn't very pretty- it was just not very natural. We played in the river for awhile, took some pictures and started to head back toward the resort. The jungle was beautiful- so many different types of plants, strange insects (making crazy noises), but not too many frogs. I was a little disappointed about that considering they advertised that they had the largest condensed population of frogs in the world.

Jungle life


It was wild in there


Crazy little caterpillar

Matt playing in the river

Up-close waterfall shot


Some of the locals really hated us

I was talking to Mrs. Franklin and she said she wasn't surprised because the forest had been destroyed many times over by farmers and industries. In the book that I'm reading, Our Daily Bread, they talk about the work that needs to be done to farm- including burning and destructing the forest. The same in the book Huasipungo, the characters are destroying the forest to creat roads for industry. It was completely obvious too- the respect shown in the Galapagos was infinitely higher. Even when we went on a hike the next day, we would walk through the woods and our guid would just break branches and hand up flowers off the vine to show us what she was talking baout. Huge areas of land were cleared for cattle. After she said that, I understood why we didn't see all the frogs we were supposed to.
After our little hike, I was horribly hot and wanted to go for a swim. When we had gotten changed and arrived at the pool, there was the group of 6o adolescents that we were warned about. Even the jaquzzi (18 person- building into a grotto) was occupied. So we met up with the rest of the group, played some cards and got ready for happy hour.

The pool

After happy hour we all got ready for our night-hike through the woods. (Something that would NEVER happen in the US without signing a release!) We saw night flowers which open up once the sun goes down (known hallucinagens), flowers called Today, Tomorrow and Forever, or, depending on the guide, Yesterday, Today and Forever. We walked through the jungle with our tiki torches- I'm amazed nothing/no one caught on fire! At one point they asked us to turn off our lights. We stood in silence with our eyes closed for several seconds (silence, aside from the screeching insects, frogs and various other night creatures and of course the random giggle and gasp from standing in the middle of a jungle in the dark). When we were asked to separate the noises and count how many different ones we could hear, it was nearly impossible. With the lights out, we could see the bark that had a glow in the darkness- natives had used it to find their way through the woods at night. It was a subtle purple-white glow that was only visible after your eyes had completely adjusted to the dark.

I felt like I was on Survivor


Matt and his tiki torch


Frog and Toad are friends...except this guy could probrably eat any of the frog that I saw


GIANT ants

We re-lit our torches and started our way back. Along the way we found a giant toad, some massive ants and other interesting things. We made it back to the center of the resort and we all had dinner together-pretty impressive that dinner was all included so we got to pick anything we wanted off the menu. After dinner we played some cards and just relaxed. We each had porches on our huts with tables and chairs- we played some music and listened to the night sounds surrounding us. You could hear absolutely everything- people talking on the other end, walking on the gravel path...
It was so relaxing falling asleep that night with the insects chirping outside. I made it back to my bungalow, too a shower and did some writing until I fell asleep.