June 13th – 2:53pm
Today, the whole group did Tabla Chupa. This time, I wore the right boots and didn’t fall 40 times. Tabla isn’t a terribly difficult trail as far as physical fitness. Once you get past the 10 minutes of climbing straight up the side of the mountain, it gets much easier physically. The trail becomes gentle ups and gentle downs.
But really this is just a tease. About half way through the trail, it turns into straight down mud with little to no foot holds. I was pretty terrified of slipping and falling down the side of the mountain. It didn’t help that I was the last one in the group. This was by choice, because I wanted to go at my own pace and not feel like I had to rush for people behind me. However, a bit of this backfired. With every person ahead of me, the foot holds got torn up more and more, leaving me no where to put my feet (that was actually sturdy!). At some points it was so steep, you just had to sit down and slide. I really didn’t care if my butt got dirty or not.
At some points during this trail, you literally felt like you were walking through a cloud (which you really are, hence the name Cloud Forest) with fog as thick as marshmallow fluff.
We found a lot of cool, really cute and tiny frogs. And, when I say tiny, I mean like the tip of your pinky finger tiny. They blended so well with their environment, you could really only hear them and not see them.
We also found some cool bugs and a lot of mushrooms and a shit-ton of fungus.
The only down-side to todays trail was that we didn’t hear any bears at all. With us being so high up in the mountain, I thought for sure we’d hear Enrique at the very least. Kind of sucks.
Can’t wait to camp. I really want to see an Andean Bear. They’re such special animals and I’m desperate to see their cute spectacled faces. Soon. Hopefully soon. Either while camping or during our Paramo trip.
With Love and Andean Bears,
Ashley
AND ON A SIDE NOTE – I can’t wait for dinner. Shepherd’s Pie = Num num num. I really need to eat a bigger lunch. Haha. Also, on a side note, I should start painting this week. But I’ll only be painting the Andean Bear Projects Logo and web address on the previously painted murals. I’m not sure when I’ll get to paint my own mural yet.
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After Dinner Blog!
Dinner was extremely late today, because Kerry got stuck in Nangulvi till well over 6:45pm. Dinner didn’t make it to the table until nearly 7:20pm. Everyone was starving, so the dinner table was silent for at least 20 minutes. Then, it was share time, apparently. Haha. We sat around the table and talked for like 2-3 hours.
Topics ranged to just about anything.
One conversation was about Sarah and I getting attacked by an old Ecuadorian man. Sarah got the worst of the molesting and was extremely tolerant by my standards. I don’t think I’d have tolerated it. This happened on Thursday by the way. It was pretty bad. At one point, I thought he grabbed her boob and everything. My eyes were huge. You’re probably wondering how this relates to our dinner conversation. We were discussing how to say, “No boob.” in Spanish. Out of no where, Dan just says, “Smack!!!” and imitates smacking somebody. It was hilarious. Dan is all about delivery. And, man, he has it down!
This topic led to another conversation about Self Defense Classes. I said, “Breaking someone’s nose is pretty universal.” which resulted in laughter. I then explained how I’d had a broken nose multiples times, 3 of which were horse related. Of course, everyone wanted to know about the non horse related incident. This led to a conversation about the high school brawls everyone had been in. I learned a lot about my fellow volunteers during this conversation. Dan apparently gets jumped a lot at parties while drinking. Jack will only fight someone if he gets really, really annoyed. Haha. And Sarah… Sarah doesn’t get in fights or she just didn’t feel like sharing.
The next topic was a little random, but Jack wanted to know if anyone had any ghost stories. There was silence all around. Then Kerry piped up and talked about something that happened here a couple months ago. Apparently, all the volunteers and Kerry were in the kitchen when they started to hear rustling in the bushes outside the kitchen window. Everyone went out and just saw this long piece of rope getting dragged along the walk way. They picked up the rope and started reeling it in, only to realize it was the neighbors cow who got loose. Not really a ghost story but a pretty funny story, if you ask me.
I asked Kerry if she had any terrible volunteer groups and, in business mode, she said “No, but…” There’s always a but. Apparently, there have been some pretty funny volunteer experiences. One of the Volunteer Coordinators caused a love triangle between herself and two locals. This love triangle ended in a beer bottle brawl.
A young, first time traveler from Hawaii, named Olivia, apparently gave a local the wrong impression while hitching a ride. The local came to the bear house at like 2am drunk and blasting music from his dump truck. He apparently kept playing the same song over and over, because it was the song he and Olivia had listened to together.
Another time, some locals came out to the bear house drunk one night and we’re screaming, “Chicas!” and demanding that the girl volunteers come out with them. Apparently, all the volunteers were just sitting on the porch in awe while Kerry told the locals to go away. Haha.
Perhaps the funniest story Kerry told us last night involved an older volunteer getting so drunk that she made up her own language (supplemented with some very ignorant American curse words). The volunteer apparently drank an entire glass of pure Puro (the sugar cane liquor without the sugar cane juice) and then drank a couple Ecuadorian beers (which is the size equivalent of like 2 American 12oz. Coors Lites). So really a couple is more like 6. She was so drunk that the two male volunteers had to carry her back to the bear house while she kicked and screamed. In the middle of the night, she got up and walked out of the bear house and went walking down the street. A local apparently saw her and came to the bear house and screamed for Kerry and told her that some gringo was walking down the street in her socks. When Kerry found her she was sitting in the grass on the side of the road staring at the sky (typical drunk fashion). After getting her back to bed, Kerry and the other volunteers had to rig some kind of plastic bag alarm system on the door that would wake them up if she tried to leave again.
Tonight was a fun night. Lots of talking. It was great.
Love and Andean Bear x2,
Ashley
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