Alllllllllriiiight, so last time I wrote, I wrote about Montañita. It is time to update again! Woohoo! Listen, for those of you so excited that you can’t keep your socks on… TAKE YOUR SOCKS OFF! I hear that it is supposed to be 82º in southeast Idaho today, so I don’t know why the heck you would have socks on anyway. Sheesh.
So after Montañita, I waited a couple weekends before going to the beach again. In the meantime, I went to La Carolina where we helped with La Opción de Vida. I am beginning to really enjoy the boys. Marcello especially is a cute kid. He is only twelve, or something like that, and he comes into the center a little later than most kids and sees me and immediately gives me a hug.
There is this other little kid that is a friend of Marcello’s and Vanessa and Carla and I were playing along with him one day as he was trying to creep us out with scary animal sounds and pretending like he was crying and such. We dished it right back. The only problem was that I was barking so ferociously into the air that my voice got hurt. It just kinda went raw, really, but then that night we went out to Ladies Night and I had a good amount of alcohol and a couple of cigarettes, which is a normal consequence of drinking alcohol in my case. So… the alcohol and cigarettes weren’t too good for a voice that was already a little raw.
But no matter! I got to dance the night away! And by that I mean I was home no later than 1:00 in the morning. Ladies Night tends to not be a really late one, since the party starts at 8:00pm, so four hours of drinks and intense dancing and we’re ready to split.
So I woke up the next morning with no hangover, but with a hurting throat that then traveled a little way into my sinuses. That’s what I get for smoking, right? Luckily I had no school because the University closed down for the holiday at noon and I don’t have class on Thursdays until noon-thirty, which is a weird way of saying 12:30pm. And for those of you thinking, darn, she is such a lazy girl with no class until after noon, you can go ahead and keep that to yourselves, because on Mondays and Wednesdays I have class at 7:00am. EAT IT! Okay, I would prefer if you would do an evaluation of whatever it is first to make sure that it is edible. I don’t want anyone dying on me. But then, EAT IT!
Oh, and we signed up for classes and I have 8:30 classes every day next semester, but I’m not foreseeing any problems with that after doing quite well with 7:00am. I feel like I might enjoy getting things done early in the day.
But back to my story, the Thursday after that Ladies Night, Vanessa called me up and said her plans for the weekend had changed, so we should go to Ayampe! For those that do not remember, Charlotte and I went to Ayampe on our way down the coast and into Perú. It is this amazing place on or near an ecological reserve and all the people that hang out there are just the chillest people in the whole wide world. Beach bums, but in a cooler way.
So I had been telling Vanessa about this place for a while and she was excited to go! We went first to the bus station on Colón, but amazingly they had no tickets. Apparently we weren’t the only ones wanting to leave Quito for the three-day weekend. So we went to the Terminal Terrestre, bought tickets, and then split up to meet there later.
There is this other little kid that is a friend of Marcello’s and Vanessa and Carla and I were playing along with him one day as he was trying to creep us out with scary animal sounds and pretending like he was crying and such. We dished it right back. The only problem was that I was barking so ferociously into the air that my voice got hurt. It just kinda went raw, really, but then that night we went out to Ladies Night and I had a good amount of alcohol and a couple of cigarettes, which is a normal consequence of drinking alcohol in my case. So… the alcohol and cigarettes weren’t too good for a voice that was already a little raw.
But no matter! I got to dance the night away! And by that I mean I was home no later than 1:00 in the morning. Ladies Night tends to not be a really late one, since the party starts at 8:00pm, so four hours of drinks and intense dancing and we’re ready to split.
So I woke up the next morning with no hangover, but with a hurting throat that then traveled a little way into my sinuses. That’s what I get for smoking, right? Luckily I had no school because the University closed down for the holiday at noon and I don’t have class on Thursdays until noon-thirty, which is a weird way of saying 12:30pm. And for those of you thinking, darn, she is such a lazy girl with no class until after noon, you can go ahead and keep that to yourselves, because on Mondays and Wednesdays I have class at 7:00am. EAT IT! Okay, I would prefer if you would do an evaluation of whatever it is first to make sure that it is edible. I don’t want anyone dying on me. But then, EAT IT!
Oh, and we signed up for classes and I have 8:30 classes every day next semester, but I’m not foreseeing any problems with that after doing quite well with 7:00am. I feel like I might enjoy getting things done early in the day.
But back to my story, the Thursday after that Ladies Night, Vanessa called me up and said her plans for the weekend had changed, so we should go to Ayampe! For those that do not remember, Charlotte and I went to Ayampe on our way down the coast and into Perú. It is this amazing place on or near an ecological reserve and all the people that hang out there are just the chillest people in the whole wide world. Beach bums, but in a cooler way.
So I had been telling Vanessa about this place for a while and she was excited to go! We went first to the bus station on Colón, but amazingly they had no tickets. Apparently we weren’t the only ones wanting to leave Quito for the three-day weekend. So we went to the Terminal Terrestre, bought tickets, and then split up to meet there later.
When I got home and started to pack, however, I had this half really anxious and insecure feeling, and half really painful stomach ache. As some of you may know, I tend to be pretty damn insecure at times. It can actually be quite paralyzing. I think since I have gotten to Ecuador it has greatly improved, but I don’t know that for sure. Anyway, I was feeling hermit-like thanks to that certain character flaw, but I was also lying on the floor trying to get my tummy to stop turning funny. So I called Vanessa and told her that if she could get anyone else to take the ticket and go with her, that I would give them the ticket or I would buy her ticket from her, or I could just suck it up and go. Luckily, she couldn’t find anyone else and I made myself go.
We took an overnight bus to Puerto Lopez, where we would have to catch another bus to Ayampe. We got to Puerto Lopez somewhere around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, after a frustrating bus ride that included several long stops in who knows the hell where. We would stop at a restaurant at like 2:00 in the morning and people would get off and the driver and assistant would just disappear. And I had so wanted to sleep, so I used the meditation track I have on my iPod designed especially for sleep. I was in this perfectly comfortable place in my mind, the track had stopped and I was just on the edge of being fully asleep when the guy behind me caught my hair in his grip on my seat as he was trying to get up out of his seat. He ripped it back (albeit accidentally), and I was dragged instantly out of whatever mental state I had been in. I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed for more than a minute the entire rest of the ride.
So frustrated, we arrived in Puerto Lopez before the sun was up. None of the coastal buses were running yet, so we would have to wait until they did start up for the day. We got our breakfast from a bread shop across from where the bus parked. There was music simply BLARING from some sort of speakers right next to the bread shop. The speakers were about a decibel shy of blowing out, but apparently that terrible music so loud and so early was good for business.
We asked what our options for getting to Ayampe were and the man working at the bread shop told us we could take the bus that would start maybe sometime in the next hour, or we could take a moto-taxi. We stopped the next moto-taxi and asked him how much it would cost. $5 to get there, where it might have cost us plenty more time and maybe $1.50 to go by bus. With the blaring music assaulting our ears with accordion and drum machine sounds behind us, we chose the moto-taxi.
For $5, we had much more fun than we would have had on a bus. First of all, the driver was focused on the road, meaning he couldn’t try to flirt with us and there were no other men to do that. Plus, there was fresh air, no waiting, and we were in a bit of suspense, as the moto-taxi was basically a three-wheeler (a motorcycle front with a little buggy with two wheels on the back) and felt as though it could probably tip over on the road that was freshly sprinkled with rain. So it was like a suspense movie. Would we catch a turn poorly and have wheels spill out from under us at any moment?
When we finally got to our destination (a fantastic hostal called Finca Punta Ayampe), Ishmael came out of his room, barefoot and rubbing his chest sleepily, and led us to a room where we could stay. The kitchen wasn’t open and no one else was awake in the whole place. When I say Beach bum, I really mean bum. The kitchen never opens before 7:30 and usually it is later than 7:30, even though the best waves are usually in the early morning.
So we had intended to take a nap right there in our rooms, but instead we snuck down and slept in the hammocks that the place has hanging everywhere. I love Finca Punta Ayampe because it is just like a big tree house. The downstairs is paved and has a couple of rooms that are just kind of separately built, but it is mostly all open. They have a tree growing up into the upper part and there is a sign by the stairs that go up to the main livingroom/dining room/kitchen area that asks you to take off your shoes before ascending. Forget the United States regulations of no shirt, no shoes, no service. Ishmael worked without a shirt on, generally, and most of the men that walked around were only wearing board shorts. They ASKED that you take off your shoes.
So we curled up in hammocks and slept for about three hours. When I woke up, I discovered that I had been covered with a blanket and that Vanessa had already gone upstairs. Ishmael told me that I was shivering very noticeably (quite weird since I could barely sit at any time during the day without sweating- the beach here is pretty hot and humid) and so had brought me a blanket while I slept. Vanessa had gone to shower and was already in beach clothes, but it was raining! It rained almost all day, but she went out while it was kinda clear to walk on the beach. I stayed in the hostal and read my book (Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck) after taking a hot shower.
I was so glad to be back there! I love that place. Everyone is just so chilled out. The staff recognized me, of course, and everyone spoke two or three or four languages. We just stayed in mostly on Friday, since it was rainy most of the day. On Saturday it was less rainy, but still a little. But by the end of the day, we went out and lay in the sun for just a little while. As we were out there, Lula, this beautiful little girl that spoke French and Spanish and seemed to be enchanted by us, invited us to a demasca, or something like that. It was a sweat lodge, where we went through four different vueltas to give praise to the earth. There was Earth, Water, Fire or Power, and Wind. We showed up late, so we did not get to be a part of the Earth round, but we knelt inside of the sweat lodge for the other three.
They had a large bonfire outside the door of this lodge. Inside the fire they had placed at least 28 good-sized rocks. Each new vuelta of this process would require 7 new rocks, which they called little grandmas. The man tending the fire would reach them in with a shovel, at which point the keeper of the rock pit would pick them up using what looked like small deer antlers and put them in the pit. There was a woman that would put some sort of herb/incense on the rocks. It would smolder and then light on fire, sending delicious smoke swirling into the lodge.
Once there were seven rocks in the pit, they would ask that the door be closed, making it dark enough that we could not see anyone in the lodge. We were all kneeling or sitting cross-legged in the mud that was the floor. The leader of the ceremony would say a good amount about the power of the vuelta, saying how water was what kept us alive and everything around us, how we were grown in the water of our mothers’ wombs, and how we were now recognizing how important it was for us. He would continue putting a little more water on the rocks, filling the whole place with steam so hot that by the time he got to the end of the bucket, I couldn’t breathe without putting my head down where there was less heat and moisture. Then there would be singing with drums and a tamborine, sometimes in Quichua, sometimes in Spanish, and maybe even some in other Indigenous languages.
During the third vuelta, we sprawled out on the ground. It was so hot that the sweat was pouring off of us from everywhere. It was so cleansing. We didn’t care that the floor was nothing but mud, we were hugging it and soaking in its coolness.
Once we finished the fourth vuelta, we cooled off for a couple of minutes and then crawled out in a counter-clockwise order, but crawling out clockwise. Very specific order. Once we got out, we hugged everyone in the line and then drank some watermelon juice to rehydrate. It was amazing. I felt so close to everyone for some reason. Vanessa and I went to our room to take showers. At first we just took a shower together with clothes on to get some of the mud off. Then Vanessa took a real shower and Lula joined me with our clothes on in the shower again to get all un-muddied. She left with her parents and I got cleaned up, before Vanessa and I went to get some dinner.
We were in a new room the second night because someone had a reservation for the room we had been in. They never showed up, but Vanessa and I didn’t mind sharing the double bed. We never really got under the sheets anyway. It was too hot.
We took an overnight bus to Puerto Lopez, where we would have to catch another bus to Ayampe. We got to Puerto Lopez somewhere around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, after a frustrating bus ride that included several long stops in who knows the hell where. We would stop at a restaurant at like 2:00 in the morning and people would get off and the driver and assistant would just disappear. And I had so wanted to sleep, so I used the meditation track I have on my iPod designed especially for sleep. I was in this perfectly comfortable place in my mind, the track had stopped and I was just on the edge of being fully asleep when the guy behind me caught my hair in his grip on my seat as he was trying to get up out of his seat. He ripped it back (albeit accidentally), and I was dragged instantly out of whatever mental state I had been in. I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed for more than a minute the entire rest of the ride.
So frustrated, we arrived in Puerto Lopez before the sun was up. None of the coastal buses were running yet, so we would have to wait until they did start up for the day. We got our breakfast from a bread shop across from where the bus parked. There was music simply BLARING from some sort of speakers right next to the bread shop. The speakers were about a decibel shy of blowing out, but apparently that terrible music so loud and so early was good for business.
We asked what our options for getting to Ayampe were and the man working at the bread shop told us we could take the bus that would start maybe sometime in the next hour, or we could take a moto-taxi. We stopped the next moto-taxi and asked him how much it would cost. $5 to get there, where it might have cost us plenty more time and maybe $1.50 to go by bus. With the blaring music assaulting our ears with accordion and drum machine sounds behind us, we chose the moto-taxi.
For $5, we had much more fun than we would have had on a bus. First of all, the driver was focused on the road, meaning he couldn’t try to flirt with us and there were no other men to do that. Plus, there was fresh air, no waiting, and we were in a bit of suspense, as the moto-taxi was basically a three-wheeler (a motorcycle front with a little buggy with two wheels on the back) and felt as though it could probably tip over on the road that was freshly sprinkled with rain. So it was like a suspense movie. Would we catch a turn poorly and have wheels spill out from under us at any moment?
When we finally got to our destination (a fantastic hostal called Finca Punta Ayampe), Ishmael came out of his room, barefoot and rubbing his chest sleepily, and led us to a room where we could stay. The kitchen wasn’t open and no one else was awake in the whole place. When I say Beach bum, I really mean bum. The kitchen never opens before 7:30 and usually it is later than 7:30, even though the best waves are usually in the early morning.
So we had intended to take a nap right there in our rooms, but instead we snuck down and slept in the hammocks that the place has hanging everywhere. I love Finca Punta Ayampe because it is just like a big tree house. The downstairs is paved and has a couple of rooms that are just kind of separately built, but it is mostly all open. They have a tree growing up into the upper part and there is a sign by the stairs that go up to the main livingroom/dining room/kitchen area that asks you to take off your shoes before ascending. Forget the United States regulations of no shirt, no shoes, no service. Ishmael worked without a shirt on, generally, and most of the men that walked around were only wearing board shorts. They ASKED that you take off your shoes.
So we curled up in hammocks and slept for about three hours. When I woke up, I discovered that I had been covered with a blanket and that Vanessa had already gone upstairs. Ishmael told me that I was shivering very noticeably (quite weird since I could barely sit at any time during the day without sweating- the beach here is pretty hot and humid) and so had brought me a blanket while I slept. Vanessa had gone to shower and was already in beach clothes, but it was raining! It rained almost all day, but she went out while it was kinda clear to walk on the beach. I stayed in the hostal and read my book (Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck) after taking a hot shower.
I was so glad to be back there! I love that place. Everyone is just so chilled out. The staff recognized me, of course, and everyone spoke two or three or four languages. We just stayed in mostly on Friday, since it was rainy most of the day. On Saturday it was less rainy, but still a little. But by the end of the day, we went out and lay in the sun for just a little while. As we were out there, Lula, this beautiful little girl that spoke French and Spanish and seemed to be enchanted by us, invited us to a demasca, or something like that. It was a sweat lodge, where we went through four different vueltas to give praise to the earth. There was Earth, Water, Fire or Power, and Wind. We showed up late, so we did not get to be a part of the Earth round, but we knelt inside of the sweat lodge for the other three.
They had a large bonfire outside the door of this lodge. Inside the fire they had placed at least 28 good-sized rocks. Each new vuelta of this process would require 7 new rocks, which they called little grandmas. The man tending the fire would reach them in with a shovel, at which point the keeper of the rock pit would pick them up using what looked like small deer antlers and put them in the pit. There was a woman that would put some sort of herb/incense on the rocks. It would smolder and then light on fire, sending delicious smoke swirling into the lodge.
Once there were seven rocks in the pit, they would ask that the door be closed, making it dark enough that we could not see anyone in the lodge. We were all kneeling or sitting cross-legged in the mud that was the floor. The leader of the ceremony would say a good amount about the power of the vuelta, saying how water was what kept us alive and everything around us, how we were grown in the water of our mothers’ wombs, and how we were now recognizing how important it was for us. He would continue putting a little more water on the rocks, filling the whole place with steam so hot that by the time he got to the end of the bucket, I couldn’t breathe without putting my head down where there was less heat and moisture. Then there would be singing with drums and a tamborine, sometimes in Quichua, sometimes in Spanish, and maybe even some in other Indigenous languages.
During the third vuelta, we sprawled out on the ground. It was so hot that the sweat was pouring off of us from everywhere. It was so cleansing. We didn’t care that the floor was nothing but mud, we were hugging it and soaking in its coolness.
Once we finished the fourth vuelta, we cooled off for a couple of minutes and then crawled out in a counter-clockwise order, but crawling out clockwise. Very specific order. Once we got out, we hugged everyone in the line and then drank some watermelon juice to rehydrate. It was amazing. I felt so close to everyone for some reason. Vanessa and I went to our room to take showers. At first we just took a shower together with clothes on to get some of the mud off. Then Vanessa took a real shower and Lula joined me with our clothes on in the shower again to get all un-muddied. She left with her parents and I got cleaned up, before Vanessa and I went to get some dinner.
We were in a new room the second night because someone had a reservation for the room we had been in. They never showed up, but Vanessa and I didn’t mind sharing the double bed. We never really got under the sheets anyway. It was too hot.
The next morning dawned clear and sunny! On our last day there, we got to lay out in the sun a bunch. I was VERY, VERY CAREFUL with the scunscreen, but Vanessa seemed to think that she was somehow immune to the sun, no matter how much I warned her to put on the scunscreen. I know, some of you are thinking, Emily, you spelled sunscreen wrong. I tell you, NO I DIDN’T! I pronounce it scunscreen for some reason, hence why I spell it that way. Chill, dudes. Just chill.
So, Vanessa got really, really burnt. I don’t think she was willing to admit it, but by the time we got on the bus that night, she was pretty miserable. I felt bad for her. I was so careful with the scunscreen, but even still I got burnt. I went out on the boogie-board with some of my weaker lotion on, so my shoulders and lower back got burnt. Other than that, I just got a pleasant spray of color, which has now fully faded. Oh well. Vanessa even didn’t go to school the next morning, though she said she was sick with something else. I have experienced sickness due to bad burns before, so I have the feeling she had something of that going on.
Alright, so this is me, about to sign out. Sorry, I have zero photos for you. I’m not entirely sure if I mentioned this before or not, but I was robbed again just as the first cycle ended, so I don’t have a camera anymore. Any of the photos I have are thanks to other people from now on. I’ll write more later about John and my experience being robbed the second time, but that should wait for a number of reasons, the most important being that it is about time for me to go back home so I can practice a presentation that I have for tomorrow in my Econ class!
So, that is about all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I present my project in our Global Ethics class. Thanks, dad, for coming through for me with the money I needed to borrow. I really appreciate it and sorry that I didn’t arrange things more ahead of time.
So anyway, I have two more weeks of school and then finals week. Then we are headed to the beach. John's gf Breena will be here by then, which I am excited for. She seems kinda freakin cool. :)
That is all I have for now! Love you everyone and I look forward to seeing y’all in a little less than a month!
Emily K
So, Vanessa got really, really burnt. I don’t think she was willing to admit it, but by the time we got on the bus that night, she was pretty miserable. I felt bad for her. I was so careful with the scunscreen, but even still I got burnt. I went out on the boogie-board with some of my weaker lotion on, so my shoulders and lower back got burnt. Other than that, I just got a pleasant spray of color, which has now fully faded. Oh well. Vanessa even didn’t go to school the next morning, though she said she was sick with something else. I have experienced sickness due to bad burns before, so I have the feeling she had something of that going on.
Alright, so this is me, about to sign out. Sorry, I have zero photos for you. I’m not entirely sure if I mentioned this before or not, but I was robbed again just as the first cycle ended, so I don’t have a camera anymore. Any of the photos I have are thanks to other people from now on. I’ll write more later about John and my experience being robbed the second time, but that should wait for a number of reasons, the most important being that it is about time for me to go back home so I can practice a presentation that I have for tomorrow in my Econ class!
So, that is about all I have to say for now. Tomorrow I present my project in our Global Ethics class. Thanks, dad, for coming through for me with the money I needed to borrow. I really appreciate it and sorry that I didn’t arrange things more ahead of time.
So anyway, I have two more weeks of school and then finals week. Then we are headed to the beach. John's gf Breena will be here by then, which I am excited for. She seems kinda freakin cool. :)
That is all I have for now! Love you everyone and I look forward to seeing y’all in a little less than a month!
Emily K
