Last 2 Weeks of August
I must say that nearly a month and a half later, that first time seeing her in Ecuador was a bit weird. To go from hanging out at least every other day to only our daily conversations online, it was weird to actually see her in person and it definitely took awhile before settling in. Anyways, that night we went back to the hotel and woke up the next morning for the Quito church tour. In Old Town Quito there are 8 or 9 large churches built by the Spanish and having recently been to Spain, these churches look like they were taken straight from Madrid. After our climb to the top of the Basilica Towers (the highest building in Quito) we grabbed our bags and headed north on a bus to Otavalo, home to the largest indigenous market in South America. The next day we spent wandering the streets bargaining for the various items people had to sell. Being a "gringo" definitely has its drawbacks in a setting like Otavalo where any vendor sees a "rich white person" and automatically gives you a price 3 times higher than they would give a local. However, once they hear that I speak Spanish and know what the prices should be we end up getting $30 hats for 8 bux. We had a good time shopping and getting juice at the juice bar in the central market, then headed back to Quito to stay with my original host family from PC training before heading back to Tena the following morning. They were delighted to have us stay and insisted we come back again before Hillarie returned to the airport.
To anyone who plans to come visit me her in Tena, I must warn you of the 4 hour bus ride from Quito. The road is one of the most beautiful drives in the country, however as it goes up and over Papallacta Pass at 14,400 feet, it is one of the windier roads here as well. Therefore, if you get motion sickness like my girlfriend... be warned. With some help and some munchies she made it just fine and we got back to my host family's house before the start of the annual fiestas. The first two days here in Tena we went out and toured the city and the property around my house. On a sunny day, the jungle is very comparable to the best days of summer on Whidbey, everything is amazingly green, the sky is blue and it's a nice 75-80 degrees out. Those first few days were just like that and we had a good time wandering the local market and going out to our cacao fields behind the house. I must also say that, as Hillarie put it, "It's like Jurassic Park out here". We also have an abundance of no-see-ums here as well, and as I have adjusted and gotten used to their bits, any newcomers tend to get covered in them. That being said, we spent the next few grey and rainy days inside watching movies while applying plenty of bug spray and eating chips ahoy.
By the end of the week, the festivals of Awapungo were in full swing and we headed down to the covered field every night to watch the soccer and volley ball games, the Yacu Warmi, or Miss Awapungo competition, local dance performers, and also sample some of the native food dishes (I can't really blame her for just taking pictures of the grub worms). On Friday of that week, Hillarie and I piled into my counterpart Lenin's truck and headed down river to visit some of my communities. In Campo Cocha we toured the cabanas and walked down the river to skip stones. Then in Kamak Maki, we stopped to tour the botanical garden, cultural museum and play with the various animals like Lucas the monkey, the Capibara, coati, and the "pet" ocelot. For me as a volunteer here in the Jungle, to this day I think that holding the ocelot is a one of a kind and defining experience here in Ecuador. And as always in Kamak Maki, it is great to go out and visit our green parrot we had at the house for a few months.
