Rio Muchacho

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¡Hola!
i just spent the last week in Rio Muchacho near Canoa in Ecuador. Our large group of 22 has split up into 2 groups of 11...Quilla, which means moon, and Inti, which means sun. i´m in the Quilla group. my two leaders are Chris and Janiva, and they´re way cool. So on saturday we got up and took an 8 hour bus ride from Quito to Bahia. we drove through towns and tropical dry forests. one of the towns had just had a mudslide, which was really interesting to see. houses were hanging over cliffs or completely destroyed and it was really sad. we also saw views of the snow-capped Andes and Quito, which were really pretty. we drove through rolling green hills of farmland and rivers and mountains of the tropical dry forest. it was absolutely beautiful. i took a ton of pictures of it, but i couldn´t possibly capture the magnificence of it. some sad things i saw was a giant pipeline in a river, piles of trash on the side of the road, and telephone wires and construction happening throughout the tropical dry forest. we did see a waterfall though. about 5 hours into the bus ride, one of the tires blew, so we all got out and chilled for a while. then we went onward to Bahia. we got to Bahia at 9ish and took a taxi to the panga (ferry). Bahia is a town on a bay with a mini carnival. then we got on the panga and took a 10 minute ferry ride to Canoa. once we got to Canoa, people from Rio Muchacho picked us up and drove us in a huge cramped van with all our backpacks and stuff an hour to Rio Muchacho. Rio Muchacho is a small village of about 70 families (each family is about 10 people each) located on a single dirt road. the river itself is really pretty and is called rio muchacho because when it gets high, it can cause a lot of destruction and go crazy. muchacho is slang for boy in spanish. the place we´re staying is a vegetarian organic farm. at 6 am every morning we have morning chores. this consists of one of 5 things: feeding the guinea pigs and cleaning up poop, feeding the pigs and cleaning up poop, feeding chickens, collecting grass to feed horses, or working in the kitchen to feed the humans. monday and tuesday i did horses, wednesday and thursday i did kitchen, and friday i did chickens. then we have breakfast which consists of all organically grown and fresh pineapple, papaya, and banana fruit salad, really good bread, delicious granola, tea (sometimes pineapple cinnamon), and homegrown coffee. it´s my favorite meal. then 5 of us work for 4 hours while the other 4 take spanish for 4 hours. monday we worked in the garden with edgar. taylor and i pulled weeds and ate basil and edgar kept giving me grubs as a present. (mrs carlson-i saw birds with thick beaks like the ones from the galapagos and i knew they eat nuts). on tuesday i worked with max, kyle, and edgar and we trimmed marancuya (passion fruit) trees with machetes. so much fun to play with. i went around and collected fallen marancuyas and ate them. they´re my new favorite fruit. then tess took us on a tour of the farm and showed us how permaculture worked. it´s way cool. EVERYTHING is grown there including chocolate. after that we worked in the garden a little more. on wednesday morning we went on a walk while carlos talked to us about all the different kinds of trees and then we saw this really cool grandfather tree that i have pictures of that i´ll put up later. then we made rings out of palm seeds. on thursday and friday we worked at the rio muchacho school. it´s a school with about 30 kids and 3 teachers that goes from 9-12 every day and is outdoors and wicked chill. the kids can basically do whatever. they´re trying to teach them english, so we hung out with them and played games like guess the animal and then we played futbol. on friday we went back to the school and played simon says, i spy, and then we taught them how to play capture the flag, which they LOVED. after morning work we have lunch which consists of soup, rice, and other stuff. also there´s always good fruit juice. then we have 4 hours of spanish. my class was me, kyle, and taylor and our teacher Arturo. he was way cool and wicked patient. basically we talked about how much we miss meat the whole time. for example, he wanted us to use verbs in a sentence, so he asked kyle to give him a sentence using the verb cantar. kyle said ´no canto bien porque necesito carne.´ it was a fun class. then we have dinner which is rice and other stuff and tea. then we either have a meeting, study hour, chill, or sleep. i´ve gone to bed at 8:30 or 9 every night here. it´s a lot of fun. thursday was Arturo´s birthday, so they made a delicious cake for him with homemade chocolate frosting. SO GOOD. the animals basically go wherever they want. there was a cow who´s mother died and he cried for a day. it was really sad. there´s also a pregnant dog, but we think she had a miscarriage. other than that, there´s a bunch of adorable piglets and stupid chickens. the first day we walked into our room and maya sat down on her bed and there was a chicken there. it started going crazy and squawking and then ran out of the room. it laid an egg on her bed in the process. good times. we´ve also seen 3 inch spiders, a praying mantis, snakes, cockaroaches, and other really cool bugs, just in our bathroom. this weekend we´re in canoa for our weekend excursion. we already had a day in canoa too. monday we came and i saw the pacific ocean for the first time and we swam in it and it was wicked warm. we played frisbee on the beach and then bought a futbol and played with that. we played gringos versus natives and then 2 ecuadorian kids came over so we each had one and they were amazing. gringos won. it was pretty sweet. i got lots of good bruises from that game. so now we´re back in canoa staying at a nice hostel and i´m gonna go get some good meat for lunch because i haven´t had meat in a week. we´re gonna chill today and then tomorrow me, corrine, hanna, and janiva are going to isla corazon which is a heart-shaped mangrove island with really cool wildlife including frigot birds. so that should be fun. until then, i hope everyone´s doing well. i absolutely love it here.
chao!
Kate

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Comments

[mom]

kate--make your comments public please, i want to read what everyone else is writing! Rio Muchacho sounds amazing, as does where you are now. I can't believe you miss meat!!! I was thinking that you would be a new convert to vegetarianism by the time you got home (minus bacon, of course). Apparently NOT. How is your spanish coming along? I sent you a long email to your gmail address, did you get it? Post pictures please! Yes, i'm very demanding and hungry for any information you can send along...i miss you and love you. xo mom

[Addy]

your favorite cousin
Kate! Your trip sounds amazing so far! i hope you are loving every minute of it (it sounds like you are!) I saw your mom at the apple store yesterday with Jeff and it made me sad you weren't there. I miss you lots! -Addy