Best For Last - Baltimoré, Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu

For better or for worse, I completely dropped the ball on my last few weeks' worth of South America blogging.  I won't make excuses, but I will point out that combing second-world cities for reliable Internet cafes is one of the lamer ways to spend free time abroad.  If I were to blame anyone other than myself, I'd point the finger at the group helado runs and semi-legal archaeological expeditions that came to occupy our off-periods toward the end.   

Still, I wish I would’ve found the time to finish the job. The end of this trip was something incredibly special, and the three weeks I neglected to write about were probably the richest, most memorable, and most ridiculous of the twelve.   In the days following the Sacred Valley retreat the group became thicker than thieves, rambling through a jungle, a mountain range, and two ancient cities with hilarious, brotherly abandon.  Here’s the short of it.


CAMINO VERDE


The first week after the yoga retreat was our last in the Peruvian Amazon.  We volunteered at Camino Verde, a sustainable agriculture NGO in the deep-woods district of Baltimoré, for seven sweltering and enjoyable days. 


This place was actually in the middle of nowhere. From the already-remote town of Porto Maldonado (10 hours from Cusco by bus), the jaw-dropping remoteness of our destination necessitated a bumpy, off-road hour in a taxi, followed by four more on a river skiff. Without a single road to be found in the area, our daily commutes to the NGO from the hostel were also by water.  Our six-room, family-owned jungle lodge, El Gato, was the closest thing to a town that we came across.  Local wildlife included, but was not limited to: macaws, caimans, piranhas, stingrays, bullet ants, anaconda, spiders (everywhere), and candiru.  Look that last one up if you’re feeling brave.


Our work at Camino dealt mainly with the maintenance and study of the many onsite permaculture populations, which ranged from hardwood groves to coffee bushes to wild forest whose growth is as yet unchecked.  The idea of permaculture is to support endangered plant species by cultivating them in their native conditions - in carefully maintained ecosystems that mime the optimal, natural milieu of the organism.  We were working to maintain this semi-artificial jungle environment while performing routine maintenance and care on some of the endemic target species.  It was hard, hot work - most of my time was spent sawing nonessential branches off hardwoods - but there's no denying the positivity of the experience. The jungle offers many a rustic pleasure: hacking open a coconut and downing the milk after a hot day, picking starfruit off a tree in the back yard, swimming in a tributary of the Amazon, and braving the Southwestern Hemisphere's hottest pepper after lunch (and surviving to tell about it) are just a few. But there was a also a hidden, long-term benefit: After that week, living conditions nearly everywhere seem utterly luxurious. (Nights were no cooler than 90 degrees, with no less than 98% humidity; ventilation was stifled by the essential mosquito net; no air conditioning; no electricity; no ice.) 

Although we had a good run in the jungle, I’d say our departure was slightly more sweet than bitter.  We sailed back upriver in high spirits, looking forward to spending a night or two in the relative luxury of Cusco’s Inti Tambo Hostel - now only one overnight bus ride away – and then heading on to our next destination, which turned out to be my favorite of the trip. 

OLLANTAYTAMBO

Ollantaytambo is a former Incan city in the heart of the Sacred Valley that remains so true to its ancient heritage that it looks and feels almost like an exhibit.  It’s located along the route to the city of Machu Picchu and home to what was once a prominent Incan citadel.  Despite a recent tourism surge (and a consequent uptick in government exploitation), Ollantaytambo remains authentically Incan: The city’s architecture, planning, and infrastructure are all straight out of the 15^th Century, or from the period of Spanish occupation immediately afterward.  At first, it doesn’t feel completely legitimate.  Movie set? Archaeological excavation? Theme park? Nope, it’s all real – just another little town in the Sacred Valley going unflappably about its business as droves of incredulous tourists look on.  

Our group’s official business in Ollantaytambo was a last round of Spanish classes and a short volunteer session at a local elementary school.  Translation: We had a nice amount of time for shenanigans.  In addition to our duties, a typical day in Ollanta included ice cream, a stop by the market, a foray into the surrounding network of mountain trails, and a stroll through some ancient structure or another.  Of these structures, the highlight was undoubtedly the massive mountainside temple-fortress that dominates the town from above.  TJ’s and my Ollantan Spanish teacher showed us a way to sneak in without paying a toll, since the entire $23 entry charge is pocketed by crooked politicians; we later showed the rest of the group the way, but were caught and shooed off after an attempt at bribing the guards.  Oh well. 

I also spent afternoons wandering aimlessly through the town with a camera, shooting the same streets that had been walked by several centuries of Inca and conquistadores.  Getting a bad picture there required considerable effort.  

On Thanksgiving Morning, our fourth or fifth morning in Ollantaytambo, we reported to the Kuska Elementary School with picks and shovels in hand.  We were going to be digging a trench. 

Morale was not at its highest.  On this most American of days, we had consigned ourselves to hard labor in rural Peru – a country with little food, no family (of ours), and the wrong kind of football.  Was this the right decision?  Was nothing sacred? We’d signed up for this program ourselves, sure, but the timing of the occasion felt somehow blasphemous.  I imagined Uncle Sam frowning disapprovingly from above. 

The morning turned out to be absolutely beautiful.  The Kuska School is situated ten minutes’ stroll from the town, on a terraced landing in a narrow part of the Valley where verdant mountains and a winding river seemed just further than a stone’s throw away.  Thanks to the boom box, the breeze, and the relatively diggable soil, morale picked up quickly, and the morning passed before we knew it – and then it was lunchtime.  

I’ll never forget it.  It turned out that the Kuska kids were spending the day learning about the great American celebration of Thanksgiving.  And their teachers had endeavored, in the spirit of education, to whip up a fresh and accurate rendition of the meal.  And we - the Settlers - were invited to attend. 

Even for a Thanksgiving feast, the result was exceptional.  Turkey, being unavailable, was swapped with some of the most flavorful, succulent, perfectly prepared chicken I’ve ever laid taste buds on; everything else was spot-on, in textbook compliance with our great American rules and regulations.  Take note, we told the kids as we buried our faces in food.  

We chowed down for a good while, and then wandered out to a gazebo in the schoolyard, where the students treated us to a concert.  It was insane.  They all played instruments – all of them – and sang these amazing international songs, in respectable harmony and several languages.  I’ll never forget how ridiculous and awesome it all was, how out of the clear blue sky it seemed, how incredible the whole Thanksgiving turned out.  I wanted to dig them another trench.  Definitely a Thanksgiving for the books.

When our week was up we kissed our host families goodbye and returned to Cusco – which, for the first time, was facing some real competition for the title of “South America’s Coolest City”.  Our stay was supposed to last three days; a transportation strike kept us for one more.  But we needed the rest.  There was a hike ahead.

MACHU PICCHU

The moment we’d all been waiting for – the lost city in the heart of the Sacred Valley, the crown jewel of monumental South America, the ultimate remainder of the Incan Empire.  Ahh, we could see it already.  

Now, to get there.

The vaunted Inca Trail had seemed like the go-to option – “That’s the trail everyone does, right?” – but we ended up steering clear because, after all, that’s the trail that everyone does.  It’s supposedly overpopulated, polluted, and, if I remember correctly, lower-altitude (meaning more bugs and more novice hikers).  Didn’t sound like our cup of coca tea.

The Salkantay Trail, on the other hand, has got it all.  It’s lesser-known and lesser-travelled, crests a 14,000–foot peak, passes by an abandoned temple (which the Inca had outfitted with sunbeam alignment technology, á la Indiana Jones), and generally tends toward higher elevation.  We went with the Salkantay, and I regret not one of the 37 miles.  

Carpe Diem knew what they were doing in saving this hike for last.  The four days on the trail were of that certain final quality that comes at the end of a long and crazy companionship.  Stories, jokes, debates, discussions, songs, rap battles, you name it – it was there, somewhere.  Rain, snow, mist, and sleet were all present in equal proportion, but they all gave way to sunshine and overall great weather.  And, man, the landscape. It looked and felt at times like the Lord of the Rings, at others like Avatar, and occasionally like a video game (I remember looking over one misty cliff, into a hard white void, and realizing that it looked just as if the graphic designers had simply stopped rendering the world beyond that point) but it never felt quite like reality.  Our amazing agency, Apu Andino, took great care of us; while it would’ve made for some serious bragging rights, I’m glad we didn’t have to carry our tents and food all four days. 

The Lost City was as spectacular as I’d hoped, albeit a little more touristy.  After our four days on the trail, where we hadn’t seen a single other hiker, I found the overwhelming number of other travellers at Machu Picchu a little unfortunate.  We persevered.  Most of us spent the earlier part of the morning skirting the city, traversing a network of roads and their adjoining temples on a quest for the perfect view of the city itself.  

In many ways, the entire complex at Machu Picchu is similar to Ollantaytambo (with the notable exception of having been lost to the world for hundreds of years).  It feels off - like a dream, almost, or a steel-and-resin Universal recreation of a fictional world like J.K. Rowling’s. It’s hard to believe that it is, a part of the real world and a relatively recent fixture of history.  

(pictures coming soon)

Mind, Body, Soul - Sacred Valley

It's pretty easy to see how the Sacred Valley got its name. The Urubamba river winds steadily between two terraced mountain ridges that have a palpable yet hard-to-describe energy, similar to the kind that you might feel in old churches or at ancient ruins. The Valley is notable for many reasons - its surpassing beauty, Incan heritage, and crown jewel Machu Picchu, for starters - but it's also a powerfully calming place. 

We spent five days at a yogic retreat in the Valley, under the tutelage of a Peruvian yogi named Chitanya. Needless to say, it was an absolutely incredible experience.  At the moment, though, I'm too exhausted to describe it all in words. For the sake of continuity of the blog, I'm gonna turn it over to my boy Jimmy Friedman, who has given our week a much more comprehensive rundown than I could've.

From Jimmy's entry on the Carpe Diem Blog site: https://www.carpediemeducation.org/2015/11/sacred-valley-ecoyoga-retreat/

“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.”
-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

On November 8th, the Sacred Valley, near Cusco, greeted us with an overcast sky, a calm river, and enormous, cultivated mountains on either side of the main road. Uphill, dorms, a cafeteria, and a meditation center (all made of a deep, brown adobe). Boulders and stone pathways decorated the large, open space between the students’ home and the eating area. The air of peace and balance was a significant energetic change from the hustle of Cusco. People came there to work on themselves and to do that alone; we were no exception. We knew upon arrival that the change in lifestyle would yield new wisdom and health.

Our contact at this EcoYoga center was a Peruvian yogi named Chaitanya. He walked up to us with a baseball cap, cargo pants, a hoodie, and a smile indicating profound contentment and a drive to teach. He showed us to our cozy living quarters and told us to “make ourselves ready.” That same evening, we began our humbling yoga regimen.

Each day we woke up at 7:10 to prepare for 45 minutes of meditation and/or chanting, often guided by centering words from Chaitanya and dulcet tones from a Tibetan singing bowl or the poignant breath of a harmonium, a small hand pumped reed organ used in small chapels. After meditation, we carried our yoga mats down the hill, to a spacious, circular practice building that, itself, took the form of a mandala. The classes were lead by Chaitanya half the time and by a disciple of his for the other half. During this time, we enjoyed an hour and a half of arduous poses, including stretches, head stands, and strenuous holds in difficult positions. Some of our favorite classes were the AcroYoga classes (simply translated, acrobatic yoga). These consisted of having one or two partners to achieve an end pose of, for example, balancing your body only on the feet of your supporting partner. Other times, one would be sitting upright with their legs wrapped around the calves of their partner laying on the ground with their legs straight up, giving way to miraculous feelings of lightness and flight. Overall, a mind-expanding experience.

After breathing our way through the early morning, we ate a vegetarian breakfast, followed by an hour of Seva. Seva, the Sanskrit word for service, included picking up trash by the river, cleaning the dining area, helping with dishes, or simply moving boulders to more desirable locations, making the space more beautiful. After Seva, there were two hours of workshop. During this time, Chaitanya taught us about either Vedic Astrology, Yogic philosophy, Pranayama (use and control of the breath), or Chakras (energy centers in the body). All of these subjects intrigued us hugely because it was so far outside of our normal, Western educational paradigm. Each workshop featured not only understanding, but moments in which we would experience exactly what Chaitanya was dictating. For example, the pranayama workshop was principally a breathing exercise to show us how to control the mind with our breath. After said exercise, we all agreed that we shared a pervading peace and calmness from the lesson. We were refreshed to know that we were gaining skills that could be used for years to come.

At 1:00pm, a seated, vegetarian lunch followed the workshop, a time for mindful eating and thankful gestures like washing dishes and cleaning the tables. 2:00 until 2:30 was resting time, followed by another workshop, leading into 4:30 yoga for a total of three hours of physical yoga each day.

Mind clear and body calm, we relished a light dinner prepared with love and great vibes. Next was the nightly Kirtan (a call and response chanting with tablas, a harmonium, and other drums). Weary from a day of spiritual practice, we went to bed around 8:30 each night.

On the 11th, Chaitanya lead us in a departing ceremony in the meditation room. Seated closely in a circle, we chanted in sanskrit around a pot of burning paper and cow chips. Previous to the ceremony, we had written down on peaces of paper one thing we want to take from the retreat, and one thing we wanted to leave behind to be shed from our pre-yoga selves. We symbolically threw the papers in the fire separately and watched them incinerate, giving us a luminous warmth.

In retrospect, I believe we did gain what we wanted to, and shed what we needed to. The 5 days were tough, but gave us new dimensions to live and grow in. Shout out to our homeboy Chaitanya for being an exemplary role model and an inspiration to live a more conscious life. From the Inti group in Cusco, Namaste.

Exploratory Chilling - Southern Highlands

Our week in Arequipa sold us on Peru pretty easily.  Aside from Jimmy, Ryan and TJ, whose inconvenient location necessitated a 45-minute commute to and from the Spanish school, the majority of us took a quick liking to the new country - 5000-meter snow-covered warts and all. 

This was especially good news because our next week was libre: We had six days to plan and follow our own schedule, operating within a given budget and landing us in the city of Cusco by the end. Within those parameters, we were free to discuss and decide our own week and our own fate. Yes.

The money, of course, proved to be our most limiting factor.  Seventy bucks can get a person a long way in South America, but it wasn't quite enough to realize some of our wilder fantisies. For example, it discounted the possibility of a quick jaunt to the Galápagos - believe me, we tried like hell to make that one work - and then anything further away (like Patagonia or the Caribbean) just  kind of fizzled away by default. But we were more than happy to hang out in Peru, and Arequipa's location in the Southern Highlands gave us tons of options that were relatively close at hand.

So on Sunday morning Lucas and I hit the Festivál de Comida one more time, met up with the rest of the Carpe Gentlemen's Club, and piled into a bus that had at one time been bright purple but was now faded and patched with duct tape. Economy is key. Though the bus squirmed in protest all the while, the three-hour drive was a cool experience for most of us; we traversed a painted desert, between twelve and fifteen thousand feet above sea level, and witnessed an alien landscape and an evening sky that probably don't have equals anywhere else on this planet.  I just wish the windows would have been clearer.

We arrived in the town of Chivay as the evening fell and the cold rolled in, like it always does when it gets dark and you're three miles above the flipping ocean. I still can't get over that.

Chivay is a charming, historical place where the indigenous culture has blended uncompromisingly with 21st-century tourism.  Women walk to and fro in enormous, brightly-colored hats and dresses, running an energetic open-air market and bumping elbows with adventurous gringos.  Most of Chivay's visitors are out to see the nearby Cañon del Colca, and we were no exception; the Cañon is the second-deepest in the world, bested only by a smaller and less-magnificent neighbor (the Cotahuasi)  to the north, and it's twice as deep as the Grand Canyon at it's deepest.  We spent a day hanging out in Chivay's cobblestone streets and exploring the Incan ruins to the East, and then decided that the canyon would be better explored from a different town, Cabanaconde, a quick 30 minute drive down the rim. 

After arriving in Cabanaconde on the morning of Day 3, we packed our bags and prepared for one of South America's most insane hikes.  Our descent - about a mile, vertically, I think - wound down an arduous series of dusty switchbacks, finally concluding at a weird little settlement known as The Oasis. An incongruous gem of palm trees and swimming pools located on the floor of this plunging, jagged, dusty crevasse, it's wholly unique (albeit a little touristy) and it's equal parts attractive and absurd. There's a restaurant at the bottom, with accompanying cabins; all supplies (and some visitors) are hauled down by mule. Lindsay actually had to enlist one for the evening ascent, which was doubly difficult on account of the plunging temperatures and the lack of ambient oxygen.

The next morning, Morning 4, our stay in Cabanaconde was brought to a close by another long bus ride - less bumpy this time, but just as scenic - to the city of Puno. We had read that our destination is a sprawling dump full of smog and illicit activity; we justified our visit on account of it's neighbor, Lake Titikaka, which is officially the world's most fun-to-say geographical feature.  It's also Earth's highest navigable body of water, and, according to legend, the birthplace of the sun. 

We spent all of Day 5 on the water, hopping from island to island in a rented boat and reveling in the novelty of it all.  Lake Titikaka? The one we've all been making jokes about since fourth grade? It was almost too much.  The Islas de Uros, manmade islands which are composed entirely of lake-borne reeds and have been maintained by their indigenous inhabitants for centuries? No way. Taquile, a Mediterranean isle with Mediterranean scenery that looks like it was picked up and plopped down on a different continent? Come on. The fact all of this is perched around two miles above sea level - that my house is located something like 35 football fields straight down? Ridiculous.

We bedded down on a night bus and woke up in Cusco, our final destination, with little to do other than recharge and explore.  Cusco is a big, beautiful, Spanish Colonial tourist haven situated on the edge of the Sacred Valley, and it's probably one of my favorite stops on the trip thus far.

Maybe. I don't know. It's pretty hard to pick favorites.

(None of these pictures are mine. I can't find a computer that'll cooperate with my camera.)

Oasis

From the bus windows

Uros

Crossing the Line - Quito/Arequipa

We left the Intag Watershed with a pretty simple itenerary: Head back to Quito, check into Community Hostel, hit the laundromat, eat ludicrous amounts of brownies, and fall asleep watching movies on the wall projector.

Community is an exceptionally comfortable hostel with delicious meals, friendly (English-speaking) staff, and a welcoming vibe. It was the first place we stayed after arriving in Ecuador back in September, and most of the group considers it a kind of home-away-from-home. We were happy to pay it one last visit to close out our time in Ecuador, and we stayed pretty faithful to our schedule.

Before dawn on the third morning we called some of Ecuador's most spirited cab drivers and burnt rubber all the way to Quito International. Our day consisted of one flight to Lima and another to Arequipa, with a visit to McDonald's (God bless America) in between. We arrived in Arequipa well-rested but unsure of what to expect; though Peru is Ecuador's neighbor, it's an altogether different place.  Supposedly it's also more dangerous. One of our leaders, Lindsay, has lived there for six years and has no shortage of stories to tell.  We were excited, but we'd mentally prepared ourselves for a distinct change of pace.

If we had any fears about the transition, they weren't confirmed.  We all love Peru.  Most of the group would probably agree that our week in Arequipa was one of the best of the trip so far; we were in a beautiful place, experiencing Peruvian life through an incredibly full schedule. We enrolled for the week as students in a local Spanish school, taking classes for half of each day while spending the other half hanging out with kids at a nearby orphanage. Our host families were amazing, too, with comfortable homes, good food, and even hot water.

Our schedule kept us busy - I've never learned so much Spanish so fast, nor pretended to be a horse so often - but I can't think of a better way to have spent our first week in Peru. This country is absurdly gorgeous, with near-perfect weather at this time of year, and it seems like day-to-day experiences are even better just because of the quality of the air. Visiting sunny Arequipa just to gawk at the snow-capped mountains and sip maté de coca would all have been great even without awesome stuff to do from sunup to sundown.  Our teachers in the Spanish school were second to none, and the 3-4 hours of daily class seemed to go by like lightening.  We also had a blast at the orphanage. Aside from some light yardwork and some chicken coup assembly, our only job was to play with the squad each afternoon - to give some piggyback rides, spend some time on the swing set, and pop some volleyballs over the language barrier.  It was a good gig, and we were pretty sad to leave on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday we rounded off the week at Arequipa's annual Festival de Comida, where heaping platters of delicious local fare are dished out at Peru's typical dirt-cheap prices.  The city's evident passion for food kind of reminded me of America, although delecacies like chicha morada and picarones are probably hard to come by in the States. Picarones. Oh man. Four handmade honey-soaked donuts, flash-baked to perfection right in front of your eyes and supplemented with a side of quinoa ice cream - for less than three dollars? I like your style, Peru, and I think we're all pretty hungry for more.  Hope you keep it all up for the next month or so.

Arequipa / Either I took this picture, or I can't find a computer that can upload my photos

Trouble in Paradise - Intag

The Ecuadorian villiage of Pucará is a solid candidate for the title of World's Most Unassuming Place.  It's a humble little town, small in every sense, with modest buildings dwarfed even further by the Andean monoliths that pierce the horizon in every direction.  The center square, complete with a small church, two stores, and a volleyball court, branches out into a few sleepy streets, ranging out in different directions towards family farms and friendly bungalows.  The dirt highway, old but rarely used, rolls haphazardly through the middle of it all; trucks and buses rumble by semi-regularly, pushing onward to bigger and busier destinations as locals chat nonchalantly outside.

Pucará has never really tried to attract much attention to itself. It's a reserved place, even by Ecuadorian standards; by American ones, it would qualify as ¨extremely quiet.¨ But after spending some time in the villiage, an outsider will discover a new-age vitality that's hard to come by elsewhere in the rural Andes. Off the square, for example, there's a Spanish school where local women can earn money by teaching tourists and backpackers their language.  A shiny new Community Center, officially the largest building in the entire Intag Watershed, fosters a close and communicative local network.  Close by is the Rio Intag Coffee Cooperative, a regional coalition of growers who together produce some of the world's most delicious - and critically acclaimed - coffee. Residents run a restaurant, selling only the freshest of sustainably grown local goods; there's also a handbag weaving business that exports to two other continents.  Although fewer than 250 people call Pucará home, the area's energy and industry are suggestive of a much larger place.

Our ten days in town were some of the fullest and most eye-opening yet.  We worked closely with Peter Shear, an American expat living in Pucará who has devoted his last 20 years to developing the community. We spent the week working for the residents, exploring the region, studying sustainable agriculture, and learning about the pressing socio-political issues of the region.

Things aren't looking good for Pucará.  The villiage is in the midst of a decades-long conflict that threatens to uproot the entire community and destroy the local way of life. The Intag Watershed, where Pucará is located, sits atop one of the largest unexcavated copper deposits in the world; it also happens to be among the planet's most biodiverse regions, with more species per hectare than almost anywhere.  Excavating and refining the copper would swiftly reduce the entire watershed to a barren wasteland, thereby eliminating one of the last great natural paradises and displacing thousands of natives, including the citizens of Pucará and similar villiages.  International companies have been jostling for the rights to the copper deposit since 1996, while the Ecuadorian government has sat passively by. Supported by only their own industry and determination, the locals have succeeded in preserving their land, fending off powerful corporate giants from Japan, Chile, and Canada. Recently, however, pressed by a growing national debt, the Ecuadorian government has begun an effort to sieze the land for itself. Locals and outsiders alike view this as traitorous; it also goes against several constitutional laws.

Our role in the conflict was a small one: To learn what we could about these problems, and then dedicate just a few days of our time and energy to the community. We saw firsthand that Pucará's best bet is a stronger, more self-reliant Pucará; our task, then, was simply to support the town.

So we stayed awhile.  We ate at the restaurant, bought some handbags, and paid host families for room and board.  We spent a few mornings plowing fields and planting pineapples with and for some of the local farming families. We hiked (and, in one case, ziplined) all over the place, absorbing the scenery and experiencing the Cloud Forest while it still exists. We chatted with locals. We salsa'd with our host moms in the square.  We got absolutely decimated by the local soccer team - although we let them win, obviously, because that's the charitable thing to do, of course. And it's safe to say that we had a truly unforgettable exrpeience.

Places like Pucará are a dying breed. Life in the 21st Century has become so hurried and competitive that even the most rural communities are endangered by the pressures of the modern area - to the detriment of their cultures and against their collective wills. But Pucará is fighting back. The times have galvanized the people into action, and they're all working, with some success, to preserve their heritage and their home. We were extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to experience their way of life. Hopefully, it will remain for years to come.

There are no guarantees, however; the people of Intag are fighting an uphill battle.  Money, of course, is what's lacking. There's truly no better place to put your spare change - dollars go a long way in Ecuador, and every cent counts in this fight.  Visit http://www.decoin.org/ to donate or to learn more.

*Actually not Pucará, but a similar-ish villiage near Otavalo, since I forgot to take pictures of the town

A slice of the Intag Watershed.  Can't capture it with a camera

SpongeBob?

Awesome tourist cabins where we stayed our last two nights, near the villiage of Junín (population: 36) - another example of Intag's industry

Welcome to the Jungle - Tena/Otavalo

We spent four days of last week in the Ecuadorian Amazon, 30 bumpy minutes outside of the city of Tena, learning how much life can improve when you're half an hour from the nearest power outlet and surrounded by deet-hungry mosquitoes.  Special thanks to my anti-malarial tablets for making this awesome stay possible.

We bunked down in a ridiculously cool two-story shack that our backpacker-friendly host family had constructed in the middle of the jungle.  Reaching the encampment from the dirt road required knee-high rubber boots and a 10-minute trek, which turned out to be a lot more awesome than inconvenient. Overlooking the Napo River, a famous rafting destination, the shack served as our base of operations as we spent the week adventuring through the rainforest and brushing up a little more on our Spanish.

I don't know what to write about first.  The waterfall hike? The laguna hike? The second iteration of the aforementioned waterfall hike, in which we free-rappelled down the same 25-foot cascadas that we had climbed up twice before? The mind-blowing night skies, the likes of which can only be seen numerous kilometers from civilization? The afternoon that we spent panning for gold in the river - with some actual success? Maybe the morning riverside yoga sessions, or the nighttime campfire jams? What about the fact that our amazing host family cooked us native Ecuadorian cuisine all week, serving it up hot and fresh right outside our shack? Or the fact that we're even here at all, instead of in math class or something? It's a challege to keep track of everything, and even harder to do it justice in words.  So many experiences, so much gratitude, and such a short time.  I can't believe it all went by in four days.

Unfortunately, though, it did - which would suck, except we're now in the bustling tourist hub of Otavalo.  We're here for three nights, and it happens to be a blast here as well.  We arrived on Saturday morning, settled into our hostel (has running water AND electricity), and struck out to explore the famous outdoor market.  It's a really cool scene, and our haggling skills are getting sharper all the time.  Most of us, if we hadn't already, bought ourselves ponchos made of llama wool. We'd look exactly like an indigenous tribe if we didn't look so much like tourists.

Today we taxi'd/hiked up to a famous tree, El Lechero.  It supposedly has healing powers; it definitely looks like it has healing powers; if these bug bites stop itching any time soon, I'll be inclined to believe that it does, in fact, have healing powers. It was a great way to spend the morning, healing powers or not, and we followed it up the right way: with a stop at a nearby bakery.

In Ecuador, a dollar can buy two generous slices of cake.  There are some American stereotypes that we're more than happy to uphold.

The back yard

Oh, hey there.

(Yo, also, everybody should check out my buddy Lucas' blog at https://doslenguasdosalmas.wordpress.com/ .  For more blogs written by Carpe Diem kids, doing cool stuff in other parts of the world, go to https://www.carpediemeducation.org/blog/ .)

More pictures to follow, when I can find a fast enough internet cafe.

Chasing Waterfalls - Baños

It´s almost a challenge to describe the Ecuadorian town of Baños without sounding like a travel brochure.  The place has everything a tourist (or a roving band of student-volunteers) could wish for: a friendly atmosphere, fantastic food, plenty of nightlife, and a picturesque mountain range, which rises up majestically on every side and boasts something like 65 waterfalls.  The outdoor scene, as you might imagine, is off the charts - but the biggest draw of all is probably the series of volcanic hot springs for which the town is named.  This week we´ve encountered other non-locals - mostly European backpackers, actually - for pretty much the first time since Quito, and it´s not too tough to understand why they´re here.

I spent the week living with my buddy Peter - Pedro, I mean - under the roof of a friendly and welcoming host family.  The first of several homestay families on the trip, the Iglesiases set a pretty hard-to-match precedent: They showed us around town when we arrived, cooked us amazing meals all week, and washed our clothes at the laundromat that they run on the roof (an extremely helpful service after a week on a banana farm).  They were remarkably accommodating, and we were blown away by their willingness to take us into their day-to-day lives.

When we weren´t sleeping, eating, or retrieving laundry, though, we were usually out taking advantage of our time in Baños.  Our full schedule was comprised of almost equal parts learning, volunteering, and exploring.

We spent our mornings at a small Spanish school down the street, sharpening our Spanish with a dedicated group of teachers - including, but not limited to, some of our Las Delicias hosts from last week.  Our Spanish skills are improving in leaps and bounds.  For me, basic strings of words are starting to become more intuitive, and I´m starting to understand what it means to think in another language.

We would head home each day at lunchtime to eat with the Iglesias clan, and then return to school afterward for more classes  -  but, this time around, we were the teachers.  Levi and I were tasked with teaching elementary English to a small class of 13-16 year olds, none of whom had more than a year´s worth of English instruction under their belts.  It was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. Our Spanish skills and creativity were taxed to the extreme, but by the end of the week we had made a pretty successful foray into the ins and outs of present tense verbs. On the last day, our students bought us a cake and asked for our email addresses. Incredibly gratifying.

We were extremely productive during the days, and exremely active during evenings and weekends. Additional accomplishments of the week include, but are not limited to: Rafting through a jungle, summiting a mountain, climbing a waterfall, salsa-ing in a nightclub, filming a music video (more on this later), running to the hot springs, and stumbling upon a good American-style burger joint.  Overall, the week couldn´t have been better.

¨Spanish Jenga¨

I can´t remember what this fruit is called, but it´s delicious.

It´s the thought that counts.