Bugbites and Beaches

Here is a quick update on our actual lives, a minor digression from our continually uninformative yet comical anecdotes:

1. Last weekend we went with our program to Esmeraldas, the northern coast of ecaudor. On Friday we went to a finca (farm) in the bosque tropical (tropical rainforest) on the Coast. We had to walk a little ways through rainforest to get to the farm, which was a little house with a completely open air first floor. They had a kitchen with stove and refrig and everything but no walls it was really awesome. We made chocolate from cocoa beans and smeared our faces with red berries that the indig folks use to block out the sun. Don't know why I didn't see it coming but apparently it rains a buttload in the rainforest. obvs. So there were torrential downpours that never stopped and we had to sprint back through the forrest to the bus. Clearly we were all soaked so the whole crew stripped down and used the bus as a drying rack while we drove to Tonsupa, a beach in Esmeraldas. Unfortunately nothing dried out cause the rain never stopped and we all just started to feel moldy.
2. Dude, you know when we do our own traveling we'll be staying in freaking ghetto hostels but you'd think when we go with the program they'd get us a place that isn't FLEA INFESTED. right so alexis, kelsey and I share a bed, and at 2 am we wake up to kstew puking her guts out. As if that isn't bad enough we all realize, or I realize for that matter, that i have hundreds, thousands of bug bites all over my body! we proceed to shower ourselves in bugspray and attempt to go back to sleep, but when I woke up in the morning I couldn't ignore the fact that I looked like a total leper or like i had scabies or something. Gross.
3. Saturday we go Estiro del Tigre, a super poor coastal village where we brought milk to the children and helped with some manual labor and mostly just felt sad about how totally hopeless the situation is for these super cute kids. Later we checked out Atacames, the main beach in Esmeraldas, a kitschy, more likely than not prostitute-infested, touristy, grimy and yet all at once lively and enjoyable nugget of ecuadorian culture. Tried ceviche there, i mean i know its like the national food of all coastal areas in south america but, just being honest here, not a fan.
4. Needless to say i wore long pants, long sleeves, and bug spray to bed saturday night despite the suffocatingly humid coastal heat. Alas, what more could I have expected upon waking up in the morning--a face covered in disgusting bug bites. Don't worry though, Sunday was definitely my fav. day of the trip. We went on a boat ride around the manglares (mangroves) on la isla del muisne, tasted some of the most delicious pineapple ever to grace the earth, road in some shady kramer-style rickshaws, burned on the beach and returned home safely.... Oh wait, did i say safely? What I meant was, there were torrential downpours that caused severe mudslides along the narrow, winding, clifftop roads where we were driving that broke the main bridge back to Quito forcing us to reroute and adding 5 hours to our trip. We got home at like 2am. AWESOME.

No matter how sarcastic and evil I sound in this post I want you to know that it was actually really sick and totally authentically ecuador--bug bites included. Kels is better, my bug bites are shrinking and all is well for now!!!!

<3 nik