An Incredible Day

If you saw a funny pic at the beginning of this blog with a little kid and an old lady, there's a funny story about it. (If you didn't see the pic, it means I screwed up when I posted my blog).

 

Diego, my foreign exchange student brother from the mid 1980s was working when we arrived to Ecuador, so he gave THAT picture to his wife so she would recognize me. Haha. I love it. I think she was expecting a little kid. And how happy did I look in that pic?  I was with my great great great great (seriously) Aunt Edna. It was one of the 1.7 million pictures taken of me as a kid and the reason why to this day I hate having my picture taken (or picture "made" for my southern friends).  It's also the reason why you see about 5x more pictures of the other guys than me.  We did get a lot of good pics today including some with Diego's son Daniel who was named after me.

 

We had an amazing day on Wednesday. We got to sleep in a little bit (for me that was 6:50am). After catching up on some email we ate some breakfast and took a drive to the mountains. We took a cable car up to 13,400 feet and then hiked the next 1000 feet (which is a lot harder than it sounds). The guys went a bit farther up another hill, but with my asthma I knew it was a bad idea to go any farther, so Diego and I chilled at 14,400 for a while. It was very cold and very windy.

 

After an amazing lunch that even included homemade tangerine and raspberry sorbet we headed off to the equator. Before I tell you about that, I have to stop and tell you a bit about the food. I've always heard that Ecuadorian food was terrible, but we haven't had a bad meal here. This place is second only to Nancy's cooking in Panama in terms of the food.

 

Back to the equator. We had a great time there doing stupid things in multiple hemispheres.  I got some cool postcards and we headed to...the mall. I have been on a quest through 5 countries looking for a pair of shoes and a sweatshirt. Shoes have been totally impossible here. I had to settle for some insoles in Columbia to make my existing shoes more comfortable...only for them to start ripping a few days later. Sweatshirts are a different story. I'm not a huge guy, but I can't find a shirt that fits me. Sizes run a lot smaller here. Jordan is a LARGE here. My forearm didn't fit in an XL and that's the biggest they have. Oh well, I grew up in New Jersey and survived about a Beka plus a foot of snow (that's 6 feet for non mudlets), so I can survive the Andes mountains with an Eddie Bauer windbreaker and short sleeves.

 

We got up at 4:30 this morning to head to Baños. That's actually a pretty unfortunate name for what's supposed to be a really nice place. This is the bumpiest bus ride to date. If we weren't in a luxury coach, I'm pretty sure my spine would be broken right now.

 

We have a 3 1/2 hour bus ride to Baños where we will spend a little time before taking another 90 mins to Puyo, which is an indigenous area in the Amazon where we will spend the night and try to make some contacts. Friday we will make our way a few more hours to Tena for some more contacts and then we will take a 5 hour bus ride back to Quito. I know you're jealous of our bus rides.

 

Well, I had planned to write more blogs and make them shorter, but that doesn't seem to be possible, so thanks for letting me unload.