about our hike (cont´d)

Hike (cont’d) Our hike with Shelly around Laguna Quicocha was cool, although the first hour felt like it was entirely uphill. As we kept climbing up and up into the paramo, we griped that it didn’t look this steep when we started. Soon, we were surrounded by clouds and fog, cutting off our view of the lake and our only measuring stick of how far we had gone so far. So we just kept hiking. The vegetation near the peaks of the rim of the now extinct volcano was all high elevation scrubby type plants. Eventually we made our way back down and was greeted by a lush, tropical-ish (very scientific I know) vegetation. Eventually the fog and clouds burned off and we were greeted with an awesome view of Quicocha. While Laguna Quilatoa (see previous entry) was a bright emerald green, Laguna Quicocha was a brilliant sapphire blue and featured a couple of “islands” in the middle. I’m hoping to upload photos soon. stay tuned.

After the hike, Shelly and I went to Quito. I was signed up for a Peace Corps E-business conference and Shelly was going to tool around Q-town for a few days. The Waorani Women’s Association has some funds to create a website, so the conference was interesting and helpful to our planning process and to learning more about the complicated process of having an online store for the artesania. After the conclusion of the first day’s meetings, Shelly, Manuela and I went to the Mindalae museum in Quito right before it was closing. We got to do a quick 2 minute tour of the place and the Fair Trade gift shop where they sell Waorani goods. In a super small world moment, we ran into two Waorani outside the museum. Weird. Anyway, Shelly and I then wandered around the area, looking for a place to get a glass of wine. We happened upon Vino & Tapas. Perfect…sortof. Well, it really was perfect. Just dangerous. The menu is set up as an all-you-can-drink wine and all-you-can-eat tapas. There were different price points depending on the quality of the wine. It was steep on a Peace Corps budget, but a bargain for someone like Shelly who is on vacation and used to paying at least $7 for a glass of wine in the states. So, we sat down and sampled some of the tapas, which were mostly unremarkable. The wine, however, was pretty great. And, well, we had a lot of it. As we went down the list of great South American wines, we had a great conversation, were serenaded by musicians and asked out by our servers. By the end of the night, Shelly wasn’t sure how to get back to her hotel (to be fair, we had walked around quite a bit before that and we both had lost our bearings). The kind server offered to walk us to her hotel, because he assured us it was very close. It turned out that it was about a half a block away. The next day we howled with laughter as we realized how preoccupied we were with getting her back to her hotel from the restaurant and not knowing that it was about 4 doors down from where we were.

Shelly booked a jungle tour and headed off on the long bus ride to L.
A. (Lago Agrio, said to be one of the sketchier parts of the country, but the launching off point for some of the jungle tours). Manuela and I headed back to Puyo the long way. It was nice of her to accompany me, because the travel restrictions prohibiting passage by the Tungurahua volcano did not apply to her and it added several hours to the overall trip. Once back in Puyo that Friday, we had a full day of meetings and activities. I was looking forward to some down time to do some writing, watch a movie, and hang out with Jer, but the power was out most of the weekend which was a real drag. I ended up back in Quito for the MLK holiday for my Gender and Development Committee meeting. It was the first meeting that I ran as President, and I have to say that it went really, really well and I had several members compliment me on my efforts. My fundraising subcommittee focused on soliciting prizes for our annual raffle which raises money for scholarships for underprivileged Ecuadorian girls. That meant trolling around the hip parts of Quito asking restaurants to donate gift certificates. It also meant I was able to stumble into some great dvd stores and get overwhelmed with the number of choices of great tv series dvds. Sex and the City, West Wing, X Files, Grey’s Anatomy…and wait, the second season of HUFF!!! Ohhhhh my gawd! It was so exciting! One of my partners in crime was also addicted to Huff and was in the market for the 4^th dvd of the 2^nd season. So…we made a deal. I would buy the set and lend him the 4^th cd…and then he would mail it back to me when he was done. Done. I was like a kid in a candy shop. I didn’t think the 2^nd season of Huff even existed. I had even gone online to look for it, and I came up with dead end after dead end. Some sites said that when Showtime cancelled the popular show, they didn’t release the 2^nd and final season to dvd. But, that memo didn’t reach the guys who pirate everything down here. And, oh how happy did that make me. Sorry Hank, you won’t be receiving royalty on my $6 entire season 2 dvd box set purchase. Better stick to the Simpsons. Oh but wait, they’re pirated too.