My last couple of months in Ecuador were a blast. In 2012 the roommates and I took a few more trips--back to Quito, back to Baños, over to Mindo, and maybe a few others?
Side note: for those of you who were not aware of this huge change in my life, after lots of thought and pondering, I decided trek back up to the states. It wasn't an easy choice, but I do believe that I made the right choice in coming back.
We spent New Year's Day in Quito where we got to see a lot of very big and intricate "años viejos" which are traditional doll-type things that Ecuadorian's burn at the turn of the new year to symbolically get rid of the year just past. The good, the bad, all of it. They just burn it. It's really cool, actually. I loved seeing all the different versions. They're supposed to set good karma (or at least clear the path) for the year to come. They can be very raggedy and ugly, but some people get way into it and make things like this:
Let's see. Since I last talked to the blogging world, I also went mountain biking through the Andes!! It was a really neat experience, but it was quite tough. It got to a point where my legs would just not take it anymore. They literally locked in place…it was so freaking painful. But still, a great experience. The landscape was absolutely breathtaking and we actually got to the middle of sierra/jungle area, so things got pretty tropical. We even saw a wild parrot. He was so cute! And it talked to us! We stopped along the way, rode some cable cars (and, of course, sang The Fray while at it), and we saw some waterfalls. At El pailón del diablo, we had to crawl through a little cave to get behind the waterfall. I included just a few pictures. If you want to see more, you're always welcome to ask! Or just browse through them on facebook, I'm pretty sure they're all on there. By the end of the trip, roommates and I were pretty tired and covered in mud. We also discovered that biking as much as we did that day makes you hurt in some very awkward places. So the sore-aftermath wasn't the most fun, haha. But definitely worth the overall experience. This bike trip is something I won't forget. Ever.
So after I made the decision to cut my trip a little short, I obviously had to notify my roommates. I hated to have to do that. You can bet I cried. So since I made up my mind with only about a week before I was to head back to the States for my brother's wedding, we only had one weekend between my Ecuadorian adventures and my departure back home. They asked me what I wanted to do for my last trip in Ecuador and I chose Mindo! There was no way I was going to leave the country without going to their infamous CLOUD FOREST! Because of the way cameras are set to work, these pictures do not do the cloud forest any sort of justice whatsoever. These clouds were so much more than just fog, and in the pictures they just look like fog. I mean, it is technically fog, but it's also so much more than that. it was so cool! While we were in Mindo, we also got to go white water tubing…but it was more of a white water rafting thing. It's weird, but I'll do my best to explain it: the tubes were tied together onto a raft-type device. So, all together, the tubes-made-raft looked kinda like a flower. Or like when cheerios stick together in your cereal bowl (does anybody know what I'm talking about? haha). Anyway, we sat in our tubes and the guides did all the work. All we had to do was hold on to ropes and make sure we didn't fall into any of the white water stream. It was absolutely intense and absolutely crazy. I loved it.
OH! And the hostel we stayed at had houses on trees! They were LITERALLY tree houses. They were so cool--I don't think I have any pictures of them though, which was really stupid of me. But the tropical weather meant lots and lots of bugs. Including big spiders. One of those huge spiders decided to make a home of my tennis shoe…aaaaand I stuck my foot in without even thinking about double checking that that was safe. I felt something funky in there so I took out my shoe to check it, but before I could even pick it up, a huuuuge spider crawled out of it. I think it was just as scared as I was. And Emily was more scared than either me or the spider. In fact, the amount of terror that I saw in her eyes made me calm down a little. I didn't need to be scared for myself because Em was scared enough for the both of us, three if you count the spider. On ΩZ bid day I actually went to a butterfly museum...isn't that vomiliciously perfect?! I guess it was meant to be. :)
I thought I would be able to briefly touch on everything I did my last couple of months in one post, but that's seemingly impossible now. I have a couple of things still to talk about. So I guess I'll leave you all to it right now! Have a lovely day!!
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