Over the Hills and Through the Woods

Things are still going really well down here and I spent the last two weekends in Podocarpus National Park, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet! The first weekend I headed into the western entrance to the Park which is only 15 minutes south of Loja. This area is at almost 10,000 ft above sea level and is mostly small trees and paramo, or highland grasslands. I recently bought a bike from a guy named Rodrigo and he and I are going to be working on the bike trail project I mentioned in my last post. We headed up to the park early on a Saturday morning to map out one of the potential bike trails and enjoy the awesome views. On the way down we saw an incredible rainbow, which was definitely the highlight of the trip.

Last week a bunch of volunteers and two of our Ecuadorian friends headed to the eastern entrance of the park near Zamora, an hour and a half bus ride east of Loja. Zamora is much lower than Loja and the area is a mix of cloud forest and thick jungle. The plant life, birds, butterflies, waterfalls, rivers, etc. here were pretty neat. (check out the pics) We got rained on pretty heavily, but that only added to the atmosphere. We spent the night in the park and then on Sunday crowded into one of the bars back in Loja to watch the Ecuador-Argentina World Cup qualifier soccer game. Ecuador was predicted to lose 0-4, but they came through with a 1-1 tie so it was pretty exciting. They would have won 1-0 if Argentina didn't score in the last 50 seconds of the game. The bar had girafas (giraffes) of beer which are basically really tall beakers on stands with spigots at the bottom, which made the game even more fun.

Outside of our adventures in the park, I’ve had a couple of urban “adventures” as well. The first was when I came home the other day for lunch. I opened the front and back doors for some ventilation and then went out front to fix something on my bike. Then all of a sudden a gust of wind blew the front door closed and of course my keys were inside the house. So now I was trapped in the little courtyard in front of the house, and I couldn’t get out to the street since you need a key to open the door in the gate as well. I didn’t feel like sitting in the courtyard for 6 hours for my host mom to come home, so I put my MacGyver skills to the test. Luckily there was a pile of paper clips, some nitroglycerin tablets, a Q-tip, a chewing gum wrapper and a coffee can in the courtyard which I used to create a small bomb to blow a hole through the side of the house just in the nick of time before the organized crime agents attempted to assassinate me. Well, not actually… But I did finally figure out how to remove the metal bar security door from its hinges and then use it as a ladder to climb onto the roof of the house. I then managed to climb over the house across the piping hot clay tiles and then jump 8 feet down into the back courtyard of the house using one of my host mom’s flower pots to break my fall. Luckily the back door was still open and I was able to get into the house. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the security door back on the hinges so I ended up having to pay some handyman $5 to get it back on.

Other than the house traverse, I had a great time picking up a package at the post office the other day. Who knew it would be such a process! First I waited on line at the post office window and then they told me I had to go to the back entrance. I waited on line there and after typing on the computer for 5 minutes he asked me to go make two copies of my passport and one copy of a customs form. (There’s no copy machine there so you have to find a store to make copies for you.) Then I went back to the post office and gave him the copies and a dollar (not sure why he needed that... maybe lunch money) and then another guy opened the package and sorted through it. Then he re-taped it and I thought I was set. But no. He gave me another form that I had to take to some municipal building 6 blocks away which of course was closed from 12 -3 for lunch. So I bought an ice cream and looked for new sunglasses for 45 minutes since mine cracked. Finally the building opened and I went to the 5th floor (after signing in with the security guard) and sat down with a woman at some Customs company that the government uses to collect taxes on imported items. After she pecked at her calculator for 5 minutes she told me that the tax would be $6.50. So I started to get out my wallet, but no... she gave me three more forms and told me I have to take them to the Banco Bolivariano to deposit the money in Ecuador's bank account (more or less). So I walked another 6 blocks to this bank, waited on line for 10 minutes and paid the $6.50. I got a nice stamp on one of the forms and then walked back to the post office and finally (after then having to look for the package again) got the box! Next time you get home-delivery of a package from UPS think about how lucky you are! :)

Enjoy the pics and click a couple of times to enlarge. Once enlarged click slideshow on the right side of the screen for full screen photos…