Return to the jungle!

Last week I spent a few days in Riobamba, where I discovered (thanks to my host family) Helados San Francisco. This is a very small hole-in-the-wall ice cream place in Riobamba that sells little ice creams on a stick....basically popsicles, but some with real cream and some with just water. They cost 20 cents each. On my first visit I tried a helado de taxo (a type of passion fruit) and chatted with the owner, who told me Helados San Francisco has been there for 45 years. After I finished my first ice cream I moved on to mora (blackberry). This was even better. I told the owner that I´d be back the next day.


For the rest of my time in Riobamba I hung out with my host family, did a few errands and went back to Helados San Francisco. It was beautiful weather, and I took this picture of one of Riobamba´s main plazas.

On Thursday I headed back to the Tena...the 5 hour busride was uneventful, and I got off the bus right at Shangri-La Cabins. My amigo Dave Axelrod (a junior at Tufts who I met at Black Sheep Inn) is now working as a volunteer at Shangri-La, and Thursday was his birthday. It was nice to be back at Shangri-La and see everyone there, I ended up staying there for two nights. On the first night I played some excellent games of shithead with Dave and some funny American girls....the birthday celebrations didn´t occur until Friday night though, when I headed out with Dave, Britt(another volunteer) and several friends from Shangri-La to a concert in Puerto Napo. The concert was supposed to begin at 8:30, but the first group didn´t even arrive until midnight, and then the second group didnt come on until 2 AM. It was a fun and interesting night...funny contests on stage, plenty of drinking (although I didn´t drink too much), more dancing...I was back in bed at Shangri-La at 4 AM.

On Friday I found out that I have been accepted as a leader for an Experiment in International Living trip this summer to Costa Rica. I´m super excited. Over the weekend I spent a fair amount of time working on forms that I had to send them...on Monday I sent a big fax to Vermont.


On Sunday I did some work on forms in the morning, then headed to Eduardo Jr´s girlfriend´s house where much of Eduardo´s family was also present. I bought ingredients to make fudge, which I did, then we left it in the refridgerator while we all went swimming. I went with Eduardo, Rosalia, Amandina, Eduardo Sr. and lots of siblings and cousins to La Isla, which is a nice beach on the Rio Tena, only a 15 minute walk from downtown Tena. The river was very nice, as was the late lunch of popcorn and french fries. IN the evening, I went back to the house where we ate fudge (see picture) with peanut butter, then played cards (cuarenta, I lost)

On Monday I went back to visit Shangri La in the afternoon...it was afetr lunch, and Dave and I were playing cards while Jose and Luis were resting upstairs...suddenly Luis shouted ´guatusa!!´and he and Jose started running down the 347 stairs to the river below....we looked down and saw some people from the Quichua village (and their dogs) chasing an animal, which was swimming down the river. It turned out to be a guanta, not a guatusa (both are members of the rodent family, bigger than a guinea pig but smaller than a capybara)...I went down to the water soon afterwards with Elizabeth and Olga. I got down in time to see Jose JUST miss catching it...it somehow escaped all 8 people and 3 dogs though...I was kind of glad, I felt kind of bad for it. It would have been eaten. Down at the beach we swam for a while, Dave came down to the water too, Shangri-La is a beautiful place.


In the evening I headed back to Tena, taking several pictures of Olga and Jose in the back of the pickup truck. This one came out pretty well.

On Tuesday I left in the morning for Papallacta, some hot springs on the road between Tena and Quito. I got to Papallacta in the afternoon, and spent time chilling in the hot springs, both in the large complex (Termas de Papallacta) and my hostal, which had a very nice small pool. It was wicked cold at night, so my solution was to head to the hot pool before going to sleep, which worked pretty well. Papallacta is a nice but remote place, but it was easy to catch a bus to Quito this morning. Now I am in Quito, back in the same internet place where I first wrote back in January. My friend Tamie (who was in Guayaquil with me) is flying in today, then leaving tomorrow. Then Mike comes on Friday!! Sweet. That´s about all for now, I´ll be back in the USA in less than 4 weeks! (but only for 14 days)...chau




Termas de Papallacta Hot Springs


View of Papallacta Village from the road to the hot springs