World Race/Expatriate Tip #4: Throwing up in the jungle is not an ideal situation. Trust me. So make sure you drink LOTS of water because dehydration is not fun for anyone. Including the adorable ministry contact that has no idea what to do with the sick girl.
Guess what time it is!? Story time! Who doesn’t love story time?! I hope you enjoy these random stories from Ecuador 🙂
Waterfalls
So Mondays are our day off and this Monday we were presented with the opportunity to see a waterfall. Who’s going to turn that down? Little did we know what it would entail! First we thought we’d sleep in a bit but then we got a call at 7:11am that our guide would be here within the hour! After hastily getting ready and grabbing a quick breakfast we ran out the door. When we caught a bus there were no seats left so we got to sit on the roof. Scary and cold but awesome all at the same time! However that bus only took us so far. So then we had to get off in this tiny town and wait almost an hour until this guy driving the tiniest pickup truck offered to drive us. So 7 of us crammed in back. It was not awesome. But again he was only going so far so then we had to wait in another small town until a vegetable truck offered to bring us the rest of the way. Then we had to walk down this paved little road. Buy a ticket and hike 40 minutes through the jungle (we’ve now been traveling over 4 hours). And when I say jungle I mean jungle. Little paths, bridges that are really just logs over water, etc. But then all of a sudden we came into a clearing and there was just this incredible, huge, beautiful, gorgeous waterfall. We were directly across from it and it literally took my breath away. We took lots of pictures and ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches (what we eat just about every day!) And then we had to make the trek all the way back home. We were exhausted but it was epic!
Wreckage
As I mentioned before this week we’re at KM17 and we finally found out what we’re doing! So our contact for that church picked us up at home and we headed out by bus to KM17. From there we dropped our stuff off at what we think was the Pastor’s house. We then trekked into the jungle. More jungle than our day off! I almost lost my shoes in the mud (ok for the sake of honesty I slipped down a mud hill and was covered in mud—I was sad). We then get to this clearing of trees where they hand us fresh fruit straight from the tree. A man with a chainsaw then chops down a tree and it’s branches and we have to move the branches to another area. It starts raining about halfway through so we stand under these trees with giant leaves. We then walk to another section and they hand us machetes and tell us to go at it. We are basically clearing grass from around trees. I was pretty sure I was going to chop my leg off! Fun fact: chocolate beans have this sweet, slimy shell around them you can eat. I did. We then had to hike back out. When we asked what we would be doing the rest of the week he replied, “similar”. Awesome.
Wattage
After that we hung out at the church at KM17 all afternoon because they were having a church service that night. Church was supposed to start at 6:30. At 6:35 the power went out and church hadn’t started yet. That didn’t stop them! Six candles were lit and we started about 7. It was really intimate and beautiful. Our ride was supposed to pick us up at 8:30 but they were a little late so we had to walk in the pitch black (the lights still weren’t on!) down the “highway” to meet him because the church closed. I was pretty sure I was going to die at any moment with these huge trucks flying past us. But I’m home safe writing this blog so no worries mom!
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So those are just three quick stories from the past two days. I was thinking about what I would have done on my day off in America and I’m pretty sure it involved sleeping in, reading, hanging out with friends, maybe a movie or shopping. Certainly not hiking through the jungle of riding in a vegetable truck. I had this moment of, “Wow this is really my life.” I seem to be having those a lot lately. And I still have 10 1/2 months. Crazy!! More stories to come!
