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.