Packing for a 5 day weekend getaway is incredible hard, especially when you notice 5 of your freshly cleaned whites are no longer white and have been changed to pink. Great, sounds like I'm going to have to give up wearing those items. Before you guys get too worried that I skipped class, we had a holiday Monday and Tuesday because of Carnival so the trip Friday to Tuesday. Five of the SNC girls and I went on this trip, we met at my house to get picked up around 7. The trip to Tena (the city we would be staying at) was supposed to take about 3.5 hours but ended up taking about 6 hours due to a dinner break and a landslide that took over an hour to clean up. Did I mention we had 4 girls in the back seat? making a very crowed ride. We eventually got to out free lodging around 2am and checked out the place, 6 beds, a bathroom, and a not so useful kitchen not bad for free I guess.
Saturday morning we went out to breakfast for a traditional "amazonian" breakfast. We all ate what we could due to the extreme heat and also extreme humidity. Waiting for the check this little girl tried to sell us gum and we all ignored her and she went away, people are always trying to sell you things. A few minutes later she came back with a black bag and asked each of us if she could have out left-over food. This has never happened to me before, I felt extremely sad and also kind of embarrassed because I could not finish my food and she was willing to eat it. We all quietly scraped our food into her bag and sat in silence as she left and it sunk in what just happened. I knew there were poor people her but I would never had thought that a little girl, around the age of 8, would have so much hunger to ask people for their scraps.
During the day we headed out to the Zoo, one like I had never seen before. It had a very natural feeling and all the animals there were rescued. Of course to begin we got sprayed with foam, a Carnival tradition. This happened during the entire trip and wasn't so bad because it usually smelled good and we usually didn't. After the zoo we headed to some caves, we had heard that we would be getting wet but we clearly didn't know what we were getting in to. We each picked partners, got head lights and boots, and headed in. We hiked, climbed, and swam to an in-cave pond/waterfall at the end. This was an amazing experience that only cost $3 a person. I was a little scared at first because it was pitch black and I'm not too fond of small spaces, but I survived and I would do it again in a heart beat.
Sunday we took a motorized canoe ride to a museum and indigenous village in the Amazon rain-forest. Here we saw more animals, learned facts, and saw a traditional dance. Later we went to a river and enjoyed the cold water on our toes after a long day in the heat.
Monday we were told would be the day to go swimming and we would first take a small walk to a waterfall. This walk ending up being a 1 hour hike through the rain-forest in flip flops. There were small streams, lots of mud that we often lost our shoes in, and many grunts as no one really knew what we were getting into. After hiking down what didn't even look like a path we made it to the river, yes a river, no waterfall, just a river. I was a little disappointed but after walking back half the way barefoot, because I was sick of digging my flip flops out of the mud, I was so proud of myself for doing it. At the time, all I wanted to do was turn back but now I can tell everyone that I've hiked through the Amazon rain-forest barefooted, pretty cool fact eh? All I could really think about was all the camping trips I took as a kid and how easy those hikes seemed now. After the long hike we washed off some of the mud, ate a picnic lunch, and went swimming in the freezing cold water of the river. Sunday night we got all dressed up and went to a bar and then a discoteca for some dancing.
Tuesday we slept in and then left around 5 and got home around 9. Ani later told me that there was a 7.2 earthquake in Colombia and they felt it here in Quito for 90 seconds, this happened on Friday when we were traveling and we did not feel it. During the trip we got to try some Oriental food including shrimp and fish. I at half a shrimp and couldn't eat the rest because I couldn't stop thinking about what it was but the fish was incredibly good.
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