The Good, the Ugly and the Bad

Wow, looking back at my journal, so much has happened this past week! It was a weekend for volunteer departures at Rio Muchacho. In total, seven volunteers, me included, left the farm. I can only imagine what life will be like on the farm come monday morning when just six people are left to do all the work! Still, I bet it won't be long until more people come. Sometimes even tourists would stay a few extra days to volunteer. Guess that's the sign of a good organization.

Last week, I had the best morning routine, kitchen duty. Basically this was the first time since volunteering at Santa Martha Animal Rescue Center that I was able to get my hands in the kitchen. For those of you who know me well, you must understand how much I miss cooking. Granted, I wasn't really cooking during the morning routine, but I still had lots of fun. Every morning at 6, I'd head over to the kitchen to cut up loads of fruit for the day's fruit salad. The contents varied daily, but just imagine any combination of banana, passion fruit, watermelon, pineapple, papaya, and mame' and your mouth should surely water. I'm definitely going to miss the tropical fruit breakfasts topped with homemade granola.


Probably the best day of the week was Wednesday. Following breakfast we had a minga/work party. The only other minga that occurred during my time at Rio involved carrying very heavy logs from a tree that had been cut from the garden. Since I'd been watching the local workers sawing at another tree in the garden, I suspected the worst again. While the minga did involve taking parts of the tree from the garden, the volunteers only had to carry off the branches. The locals, bless them, did all the heavy work. And, better yet, at 10.30 I was asked to go help prepare lunch. My tasks for lunch included preparing the huge bowl of limeade and the salad.

During lunch that day, my friend Kat mentioned that we wouldn't have to work in the afternoon. For a split second, I was totally confused and then I remembered it was cultural day! The volunteers who had been on the farm for a month or more went on a "secret" excursion. Dario, the farm's owner, took us to a hidden beach. I felt very lucky because one of the volunteers has been at the farm since November and was just going to the beach for the first time with us. The beach is about 50 minutes from Rio Muchacho by car. Once we arrived at the waterfront, we walked another 30 minutes on the sand to get to the good swimming spot. The beach is covered with plantlife and drift wood. It reminded me of walking along the waterfront in Monterey, CA. Even though the Canoa beach is nearby, there are no longer remnants of drift wood or plant life...probably because tourism has changed the lay of the land.


So, after spending Friday night and Saturday in Canoa, it was time to head back to Quito once more. I left on the overnight bus. The ugly part of this entry is that an hour into the bus ride I started to feel sick. The nausea had consequences, which to say the least made the trip extremely uncomfortable. Thank goodness there were two open seats in the front of the bus that I quickly took for myself. I arrived at a hostel at 5.30 in the morning and was basically an invalid for the whole day. I dragged myself from my room for about an hour to take my laundry to be serviced, wish my mom a Happy Mother's Day and buy some Gatorade and saltines. Thankfully, I'm feeling more like myself today, which is a good thing because...last night my friend Jen flew into Quito!

Jen has talked about visiting me in Ecuador since last year, but it wasn't until a few weeks ago that she found an amazing plane ticket and decided to take the plunge. We have a rough idea of places we want to visit over the next ten days, but knowing us, the plans will change. Today we are going to chill in Quito so Jen can get acclimated and I can get my laundry back. Tomorrow, I'm guessing we'll take a bus to Tena, but then again, we could decide to go north to Ibarra or more south to Banos.

So, for the next month I'll be traveling exclusively. The day Jen leaves, my mom flies in to travel for a few weeks. It's kind of strange to think that my three months of volunteering have come to pass. It surely doesn't feel like I've been here for that long. Rio Muchacho was my favorite location to work, though each place was meaningful to me in different ways.

Oh, I forgot to mention the bad part of the entry. If I had to recall something that was bad about last week it was probably finding eight ticks on me in just over an hour. I was working in the Sai Baba meditation garden at Rio in an area that was obviously tick haven. From what I can tell, I got all the ticks off of me before they started to feast on my blood. Definitely a good thing since I have a tick phobia.

Hasta Luego...

Becky