Vamos a la costa

We've been in Ecuador for a week now but it seems like much longer. I'll rewind to last Sunday...

We woke up early and piled into the Jeep that we had rigged with a tarp the day before. 5 of us made the trip: Mike and I, Stephan (another volunteer from Germany who had been with BioMindo for two weeks before us and speaks English and a little Spanish), Leo (an Ecuadorian volunteer who speaks no English and A LOT of very rapid Spanish), and Milton, one of the founders of BioMindo (also Ecuadorian). Leo´s little sister also rode for a bit of the way to Puerto Quito. Mike and I sat on a plank in the back with minimal leg room, and we were off. The trip took about 12 hours, including stops for breakfast in a town that I´m sure gets very few touristas, changing all of the tires in Puerto Quito, buying fruit on the side of the road, peeing on the side of the road, and buying fish from boats on the beach in Same. We also never went over about 35 mph. At first it was lots of fun--oh what a grand adventure we were on! But after 12 hours of sitting cramped up on a board, getting splattered with oil from the road, not fully knowing what was going on anywhere we went, trying to understand and speak Spanish, getting stared at, and feeling completely lost and clueless, we weren´t in the best of spirits upon our arrival in Estero de Platano. In order to get to where we were staying we had to drive down the beach and cross a little river, but of course the Jeep got stuck. Lots of people came out to help and after about 45 minutes the car was free and darkness was falling. We made it to the little cabin we´d be staying in and Mike and I set up our tent in the dark in the swealtering heat, then we all went to have some dinner at the only place in town. It was a good meal of rice, fish, and plantains, but we still didn´t fully have appetites, and felt bad about not being able to eat it all. After dinner we rinsed off a little bit in the public shower above the beach, then went to bed.

I had spent all day following along, not complaining or asking too many questions, and trying my best to go with the flow. But I was exhausted from all of the day´s foreign experiences, hot dirty, and my head hurt from trying to think in Spanish. As soon as my headlamp was out the tears started flowing and I officially had my first breakdown of the trip.