junglerainforestadventure!

how to get to the rainforest:

1. take a taxi to the airport at 530 in the morning.
2. take a really small airplane over the andes for 45 minutes.
3. take a bus to a hotel with illegal wild monkeys, parrots and peacocks.
4. take a canoe with a motor for an hour and 40 minutes.
5. take a chiva bus for 2 hours, meaning a wooden bus, without any glass windows so the air blows your hat, food and anything else not firmly held down into the abyss.
6. take another motor canoe for 2 hours, this time in the rainforest rain so that anyone without a poncho immediately accessible got soaked.

the slightly soggy journey was well worth where we found ourselves after the last canoe ride, the tiputini biodiversity station, which is a research station affiliated with the university of san francisco, quito and boston university.

after a surprisingly delicious dinner of spaghetti and tomato sauce and garlic bread, we split into groups of 6 students with a guide, making three groups, and left on a night hike through the jungle.

my group of 6 slightly scared but really excited fellow journeywomen ventured into the darkness with not enough flashlights and no cameras and found something of everything. we encountered frogs (ranas), toads (sapos), lots and lots of different kinds of ants (hormigas and congas), mushrooms and fungi (hongos), spiders (arañas), and of course, trees (arboles).

the frogs were mainly transparent and the size of a quarter, the toads were bigger and brown or green, the ants called congas were probably as long as a quarter, in one spot our guide told us to turn off the flashlights and slowly, glow in the dark mushrooms became speckles of light in the ground, my guide called them stars from the ground and they really did look like a mirror image of the sky. we also found tarantulas hanging out in their holes.

the next morning my same group found ourselves on a 120 foot platform overlooking the jungle. it was beautiful. later we crossed a few bridges, all connected by platforms at the top of the jungle trees. terrifying but beautiful.

on our last full day we took the motor canoe down the river and jumped into the river. in our oversized lifevests we floated with the current followed by the boat. even though the river was brown and caymans are known to live in it, the river floating adventure might have been my favorite.

the next day we took a couple boats and buses and an airplane to get home. and it is nice to be here, with bug bites constantly reminding me of the good times had a few days ago. now i am on my final stretch, with only a 25 page essay between me and the end of my semester in ecuador.

oh and i don't have any pictures, but as soon as i find some i will put them up.