La Costa- Warning: It’s long

This week was my long-awaited trip to the coast. The trip started out early Saturday morning with a 9-hour drive to the coast. Luckily the drive turned out to be pretty fun, especially considering how long it was. We stopped by palm oil and banana plantations, fruit markets, and a beach to swim. It was awesome to get out of the city and the Andes but it was also really shocking to see how bad the deforestation is in the lowlands of Ecuador. The first three nights of our trip were spent in a dry-forest reserve that Ceiba set up with a local dairy farmer (he made the best yogurt I have ever had!). We stayed inside a large cabin and a local family came and cooked for us. On Sunday we hiked through the reserve and practiced forestry field methods. The highlights of the day were watching several groups of howler monkeys and finding tarantulas!
On Monday we woke up bright and early to work on insect collection and identification. I was having a blast at first (there is so many cool insects in Ecuador!) but by noon I was feeling weird. At first I assumed I had just been breathing too many fumes from the “kill jars” for the insects but within an hour I started throwing up. This was the beginning to one of, if not “the”, worst day/s of my life. Being sick sucks. Being sick in a tropical forest where your nearest toilet is surrounded by gigantic spiders/scorpions really sucks. I ended up forgoing the outhouses and opted for the poisonous snakes in the forest instead. By the end of the day I had thrown up a total of 17 times. The family who was cooking for us felt awful for me and kept on bringing me cups of oregano tea (the “cure all” in Ecuador). I now do not think I can ever eat pizza or anything with oregano as an ingredient ever again. I kept on trying to put a positive spin on things by reminding myself that not everyone gets to hang out of a hammock vomiting all day in a rainforest, but overall it was a horrible, horrible day! However, one positive: since I was up-close and personal with the ground all day, I did spot many a bug that I otherwise would have missed.
• At the time of my sickness I was believed to have food poisoning. This “food poisoning” then proceeded to spread to almost the entire group at a rate of about 3 people a day for the rest of the trip. However, no one else threw up like I did but rather emptied their bodies by other means. Any possible qualms that our group could have ever had about talking about bodily functions are now completely gone.
On Tuesday morning I woke up feeling better but weak. Our group cruised up the coast to a little fishing town where we rented a boat to go check out mangroves. Mangroves are a tropical tree, which are specially adapted to live in salt water. They have all these crazy roots for water uptake and overall just look really cool. We boated around for the most the morning bird watching and then toured a shrimp farm. Later that night we headed back down the coast to a private beach near the reserve. The bus rides were really fun since we were driving down the coast during Carnival (Ecuador’s equivalent to Mardi Gras on the coast). Due to the celebrations there were people everywhere along the roads, especially children throwing water at the buses. Our bus got soaked about 10 times before we caught on and started throwing water back at people while we drove through towns. Once we got back to the beach we had our own little carnival celebration, where we discovered that our professors could party harder than the rest of the group combined.
Wednesday was a free day (the third free day in a month!). I slept in the latest I have slept since I arrived, which was eight, and then swam for most of the morning. I tried body surfing for a while, but didn’t last very long since this involves putting my face in the water. After I gave up on swimming I went on a walk and saw a huge iguana (like 4 feet)! So cool! Later that day a few of went on a horseback ride with a local Peace-Corp volunteer to a nearby town. I have not ridden a horse since Sundee died (and was then savagely “buried” by my father in a bone pile) but I ended up being really glad I “got back on the horse”. The town we rode to was in a super-impoverished area that the volunteer is hoping to work with. We ended up spending most of the afternoon in the town talking to a family. It was pretty eye opening to visit an area like that and I was once again reminded how lucky I am to have been born into my life.
Later that night several locals from the town near the reserve came to our campsites and we had another little fiesta. We had already been having sing-a-longs every night (I “bleat” a long) with a guitar but the locals brought a drum as well. We salsa danced a little and then passed out in hammocks for the night. I discovered that I am horrible at sleeping in hammocks. Both nights I fell asleep in a hammock and both mornings I woke up face-planted in the sand.
Anyway, as of now I am back in Quito with my family until Monday morning (Feb.11th) when I take off for

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