more stamps in the good ol' pasaporte

I finished classes and all of my exams and final projects for university last week on Wednesday, which is super, because exam week actually starts this week! My friends Ryan, Josh, and I decided to go to Colombia for the weekend! (despite people saying how stupid we were and how dangerous it was and how we shouldn't) We left on Thursday at about 530 or so to go to Tulcan, which is about 3.5 miles from the border and stayed there that night. Actually when we got to the bus station, we took a taxi to what we thought was supposed to be a hostal, but apparently the guy didnt hear ryan include the world hotel, so he took us the the district of the town that had the same name. He couldn't find the hotel after that, so we gave him another name of a hotel in our travel book and he couldn't find that either, so we rode around in the taxi for about 20 minutes and all along he was saying this one is good and this one is good but a little expensive until we finally decided on one since he didnt know the other 2. He only made us pay $4 for the 30 minutes he was driving us around and then even got the price down on the hotel we were going to stay in. The room only had 2 beds in it so we pushed them together and I slept close to the crack while hogging a little bit of Ryan's covers.

We woke up whenever we wanted to on Friday (and Saturday and Sunday) and took a taxi to the border, where we were supposed to get our exit stamp and Andean card from Ecuador and our entrance stamp from Colombia, and our taxi driver drove us past the Ecuador border and right before we crossed over, he was like oh crap i forgot! haha So we got all the stuff we needed to, walked across the river (no man's land) and got our entrada in Colombia. We also got us a picture with the sign saying welcome to Colombia! Then we had to take a taxi from the border to Ipiales, which we were planning on stopping in on the way back, so we took a bus from there to Pasto. It took about 5.5 hours to get to Pasto, where we arrived and stayed in this cool inn called Koala. The people that owned it were very nice and the place was super cool and our room was HUGE! AND we each had a bed to ourselves!

We got our money exchanged at the border because they use their own pesos in Colombia and its 1700 pesos/$1 conversion which is kind of confusing and a little hard to get used to. We had a lovely lunch and walked around Pasto a bit, then when we returned to our hotel, we had some visitors knocking at our door, which so happened to be 2 girls from USFQ! how random but so cool, so we all walked around together to see the churches and centers and parks and stuff around Pasto then had a lovely dinner, in which we tried these things called Arepas, which were sooo good! Then we hung out the rest of the night in the hotel room drinking just a bit, cause you gotta try beer and alcohol from colombia! The next morning Ryan, Josh, and I woke up and went to this place called Laguna de la Cocha, which was this huge lake with an island in the middle that we boated to and hiked into just a bit for 1000 pesos. The town that is on the edge of the lake is the cutest town and the people are so nice and is known for their trout so we decided to eat some. We didn't have so many pesos left, so we were just hoping to be able to get back. The trout was delicious, but still had the head and the tail on it when we ate it!

We didnt have enough to get back, but we told them we'd pay the rest when we got to the Inn so we split the taxi with an older man. Then we had to try this other thing called something I don't remember and were very very good, but I'd had them before in Ecuador and already loved them. We watched Rumor Has It on tv and passed out that night and headed to Ipiales the next morning. There, the only thing we wanted to do was to see this huge famous church that sits on top of a river! (actually doesnt "sit" persay.. it has huge columns and an archway that are under it) It was so neat to see and so hard to walk up the steps to get to certain points and to get back up to catch the taxi, because it was down in a valley and so steep! My calves still are sore today. Then we took a taxi back to Ipiales, back to the border, got our exit stamps from Colombia, our entrance stamps and andean cards, took a taxi to Tulcan, had a yummy dinner, and headed back earlier than planned to Quito. (we almost didnt have enough money to do anything (pesos wise) so luckily josh and ryan had a little bit left, and I gave the money man a dollar to exchange for 1700 pesos just so i could keep them!)

those bare necesities..

We had a Thursday off of school 2 weeks ago, and even though everyone else in Quito had school off, stupid USFQ decided to go against the president and have Friday classes/work, so we skipped it. My friends from the Otavalo trip (pretty much my best friends here) and I decided to go to the jungle aka el oriente. We left on Wednesday night at 1130, got to a town called Lago Agrio at about 630am (which was supposed to be more like 8am), and had to wait a very long 4 hours for the few people that were arriving by plane. Then we took a 3.5 hour bus ride to Putumayo, and a 2 hour canoe ride to get to Cuyabeno which is deep into the jungle and stayed at a camp thingy. The place we stayed at had no electricity so we used candles at night to see in our rooms and outside and eat dinner and play cards at night! It was actually pretty cool. There was a monkey named Poncho that lived at the camp and was like 5 months old and the cutest thing ever. When Melanie and I got to our room on Thursday at about 6 something right when it was getting dark, we were unpacking a few things, and I saw this huge clump of something on our bed and it started crawling! We realized it was the monkey that our friends had told us about, who had gone to the same place the weekend before so we werent so freaked out. It climbed right onto my shoulder and hung out there! Poncho hung out with us all weekend and very often just decided to climb up us and sleep on our shoulders or in our laps and steal some food off our plates! haha
All of the trips we took while we were there were in canoe. We went on a few bird watches, a few walks through the jungle, and swimming a bit. We got to see a ton of toucans and lots of cool and ugly birds, the biggest tree ever with the biggest roots ever (probably 3 times me!), a sloth, the back of a manatee, some pink dolphins, monkeys, spiders, frogs, and snakes! I actually held a snake at one point and he bit me a few times, drawing a little bit of blood, but it's all good.. he's not poisonous! haha We also went fishing for piranhas! You're supposed to swish the pole in the water a lot and wait. Our guide Neiser and Melanie both caught one and the teeth in those things are so large and pointy! It was pretty sweet.
All the food we had there was soo good and typical Ecuadorian style.. soup first, a plate with a meat, some rice, and some veggies, along with a glass of fresh fruit juice (different every night), and then a dessert like fruit or somethin. You could never hear them making it and then all of a sudden they would ring the bell and come out with all this food! There was a group of about 50 high school students there so there were so many people there to feed. I also learned how to actually play spades there and Ryan and I won the first game that we played to 500 so we were pretty proud of that but then we got our butts kicked the next day when Melanie and Josh beat us so bad. It was such a great trip and the last thing we all definitely wanted to do while in Ecuador.

Lots of money and mud

So after Montanita and Guayaquil, me and 3 of my friends (Ryan, Josh, and Melanie) decided to take a short weekend trip to Otavalo. Otavalo is only about 2 hours away, but it took us about 3, maybe more, to get there because we always happen to leave at a bad time when there is a lot of traffic (but I guess there is always a ton of traffic in Quito)! Otavalo has one of the largest markets EVER (ha maybe not, but its fricken huge), and it happens every weekend so we went there on Friday night to stay (I actually tried huka for the first time.. never again) and went to the market on Saturday. I bought waaay too many things, but they are all pretty cool things and not all for me so I figured it was ok. We spent about 2 or 3 hours shopping (even the boys)! I bought a hammock and a cute bag and lots of other things. Then we decided to go to this place called El Lechero, which is a "lucky" tree that is supposed to bring health. We decided we might get healthier if we climbed up it, so we did. I still had some stomach problems (which actually lasted about a month, but stopped about a week later) so it didn't heal me! haha We could see the prettiest lake from the top of the tree and took lots of pictures. Then we decided to take a different route back. We had tried to walk there on the way there, but got a tad lost so took a taxi the rest of the way. We wanted to go down the other side of the huge hill thing we were on, so we did. We walked down a pretty steep hill, through some crops that were taller than us, down a dirt road, and then pretty much slid and fell down this steep hill that had a bunch of crevices where the earth has split and there was tons of rocks and mud cause it had rained all day so far. I fell soo much and it was the most hilarious thing ever. My pants were disgusting and so were my tennis shoes (which now smell horribly even after my sister washed them and I will be leaving them here!). We looked pretty rough by the end of that trek, but it was so worth the laughs.