Hola from Ecuador!

September 21, 2009

Hi all! So I am a few days into my journey now and wanted to write a quick entry. Everything worked out perfectly with meeting Teja and Nadja at the airport, and then meeting Tom at the hostel. During our time in Quito, we did some sightseeing--took some cable car kind of thing and went really high up to a great view, and did some hiking--honestly, the most intense hiking of my life, haha. The altitude got to me a bit and I felt some altitude sickness, but a nap cured all.
We had some interesting adventures trying to get to a cloud forest, which ended up being quite an interesting sampling of different buses, confusion, and ended up visiting the location of the equator and learning some about the culture of the Amazons, and the animals, etc.
The hostel was cute--well, our room was smelly and we had crunchy beds-but for my first hostel, it went great. It was a pretty quiet hostel (so I hear) and I got to speak a TON of Spanish to the hostel owner and his family, so I was loving that. Also got to meet other travelers from England, Finland, and the U.S. which is fun to talk to everyone. We had some interesting experiences in Quito, which I will write in more detail another time...but overall, Quito was fine but I didn´t love that city. Wasn´t too sad about leaving :)
Today we just arrived in Tambillo, at the animal rescue center that we will be volunteering at. We were shown our house-very simple but "quaint and cozy" (shout out to OCHO for that phrase). All the new volunteers got a tour of the hacienda (property) and we saw monkeys, birds, lions, pumas, etc. There are maybe about 15 volunteers here from all different countries, so that will be fun to experience. Tom and I just went food shopping since we will all be cooking dinner together in our little volunteer house.

Anyways: food is so cheap here--really almost everything is, which is cool. Speaking loads of Spanish and learning new words everyday which is awesome. Will update again soon!