trans-Ecuador

you know that feeling when you are looking forward to something so much that you think the time will never actually come? well thats how i have felt about the trip to tiputini. at the exchange student orientation back in january, a director at usfq told all of us that we would have the opportunity to visit tiputini, the school's biodiversity research station in the jungle. after speaking with other exchange students who had been in ecuador the past semester and hearing them rave about the awesomeness that is tiputini, i knew it was a trip i couldnt miss. so i signed up back in february and had to wait two whole months for the trip! two thursday nights ago, i packed my backpack full of ecua pants, a raincoat, and lots and lots of bugspray and was ready for the trip to begin...
friday morning, we all met at the airport at 730am and knew we had an extremely long day of traveling ahead of us. after an hour long flight, a two hour boat ride, a two hour bus ride, and another two hour boat road, we finally arrived in tiputini. it was about 9 hours of traveling but thankfully, tiputini had bathrooms, fruit, hot chocolate, and oreos waiting for us when we arrived and that made it all worth it. we met diego - head of tiputini - who explained the rules and regulations of tiputini, like dont put toilet paper down the toilet, the lights turn off at 9 pm, you must be awake at 6am for breakfast, etc. etc. after a delicious dinner, we got to explore a bit. basically tiputini consists of an open air dining hall, a library / research center (the only air conditioned place!), and about 5 or 6 cabins literally in the middle of the jungle. the cabins were actually very nice though - bunkbeds, cold water showers, and mosquito nets - everything you need in the jungle! we hung out in the library for a while and quickly realized theres not too much to do in tiputini once the lights are off. we played hang man and did puzzles and talked for a bit, but then headed off to bed once we realized we have to wake up at the crack of dawn. so the next morning, we met at 630 in the dining hall and had a delicious breakfast. then we broke off into groups each with their own tour guide. my tour guide was named mayar and he was probably the cutest little old man i have ever met. he took us on a hike through the jungle, pointing out cool plants and animals here and there. then we scaled a ladder that ended at a tree house in the highest tree in the jungle! literally we could see the tops of all the other trees in the rainforest... it was so cool! and mayar used a handy-dandy telescope to point out toucans, bats, monkeys, eagles, etc. while up in the tree house, we also encountered some of the craziest looking bugs i have ever seen. my new fear: bullet ants. they look like regular ants just about an inch longer but when they bite/sting it is so painful, it feels like you have just been hit with a bullet from a gun! can you even imagine? screw spiders and tarantulas - i was keeping my eyes peeled for the bullet ants the whole weekend. after lunch, a torrential downpour (i now understand why they call it the RAINforest), and an epic nap, we went for an afternoon hike. all eight of the people in my group, including mayar and myself, piled into a tiny canoa (canoe) that i think was only supposed to hold two people. we rowed around a little lagoon that is famous for its anacondas, crocodiles, and piranhas. thankfully, we didnt encounter any of those horrid creatures, but we did see some cool bats and birds and insects. we then hiked back to camp, again encountering, some of the coolest and most beautiful plants and flowers i have ever seen. after dinner, we set out on a night hike. it was very cool, yet super-eerie trekking through the rainforest in the complete darkness. but it was totally worth it because we saw gigantic bugs, jungle fireflies, snakes, and taranchulas! on sunday, our morning hike was the canopy tour. we climbed another tall ladder, and crossed three or four wooden bridges strung between gigantic trees, probably 100 feet off the ground. i saw amazing views, beautiful birds, and again, some scary insects up there, but it was one of the coolest feelings literally being in the trees of the rainforest! mayar then showed us some interesting leaves that he weaved into bracelets, a cool nut that left a blue tattoo on the skin for three days, and some of the widest trees i have ever seen! after yet another delicious lunch and amazing afternoon nap, the directors told us to get our bathing suits on and meet at the boat. soon after, they informed us that we were going to be floating down the tiputini river in life jackets for about an hour. sounds cool, right? well it would be cool if the river werent infested with anacondas, crocodiles, and piranhas! i felt like i was committing suicide as i jumped off the boat into the murky water, but hey, not many people can say they've floated down a river in the ecuadorian rainforest so i had to do it. i must admit, i was a bit scared, but im a small girl so i figured the crocodiles would go after one of the larger gringos before eating me so that was reassuring. but the water was freezing and a perfect brown color, so after about 45 minutes, we were done floating and the boat picked us up. on our way back to the station, my dream came true... we passed about 3 trees full of spider monkeys!!! I LOVE MONKEYS. they were so cute and curious and funny- i couldve watched them for hours and taken all of them home!
on monday, we woke up early, packed up, and headed out of tiputini around 8am. boat, bus, boat, airplane and 9 hours later, we were back in quito. the people in the airport must have thought we were nomads because we looked dirty beyond belief and smelled absolutely terrible. but it was totally "vale la pena" because spending a weekend in the rainforest of ecuador was one of the coolest experiences of my life and something i will definitely remember forever!

so, i returned to quito on monday evening and as usual - it was cold and raining. this rainy season weather really sucks and has been getting me down, so my friends and i decided another trip to the beach was exactly what we needed. exactly 48 hours after returning from the western part of ecuador (the rainforest) we headed all the way to the east, back to canoa - the beach we had visited just two weeks before. why go back to the same beach if there are plenty of other places in ecuador? you ask. well, we planned on going back to montañita but it takes a third of the time and half the price to get to canoa versus montanita, and we made some really awesome friends in canoa, stayed in a really fun and cheap hostal, and the beach is absolutely gorgeous, so we said "why not canoa?" after taking the night bus that had its air conditioning on full blast, no bathroom, and blue spaceship-like lights on the entire trip, we arrived in canoa at 5am. of course our hostal wasnt open yet, so we chilled on the beach, watched the sunrise, and waited for a reasonable hour to go knocking on the hostal's door. oh i can now say that i have brushed my teeth on the beach while watching the sun rise!
we've pretty much got the beach routine down to a science: breakfast at the hostal, chill on the beach for a couple hours, take a walk, go surfing if possible, grab a fruit batido for lunch, go to happy hour, watch the sunset, eat dinner at the surf shak, and then spend the evening dancing and karaoke-ing in the bar in the bottom of our hostal with all our canoan friends.... what a tough life i lead, right? so thats pretty much the schedule we followed friday through sunday and i could do that everyday if possible. one day our canoan friend took us to "las cuevas" or the caves at the end of the beach. we hiked up this really steep hill, walked through a field, climbed under some barbed wire fences and then arrived at a completely deserted secret beach tucked in between two cliffs. we swam for a bit, and looked at the cuevas but unfortunately it was high tide so we couldnt walk through the cuevas. guess we will have to save that for another trip to canoa! when sunday rolled around, i fell into deep depression mode just thinking about leaving the sun, surf, and sand for the concrete, pollution, and rain of quito. i do love quito but when you've lived there for 4 months and you have the choice of quito or beach, beach it is. but we had to go, so sunday, we took the night bus home to quito, arriving at 3:20am to approximately 40 degree weather and - you guessed - lots of rain. TAKE ME BACK TO THE BEACH NOW!

one month from today, my roommate chelsea and i will be traveling ecuador (so stoked!) but the majority of my study abroad friends will have already gone back to the states. its really hard to believe how fast the time is flying so im trying to make the best of every minute i have - even if those are minutes spent in rain and cold weather in quito. easter vacation starts this thursday, and we hope to celebrate by going rafting in tena, then to some beach for the weekend. and after that, its 5 days in the galapagos!! I.CANNOT.WAIT.

that's it for me for now. can't wait to share just a few more blogs as i wrap up my amazing semester in ecuador :)

a hermosos puestos del sol y hermosos amigos ("to beautiful sunsets and beautiful friends"),
sha sha

 view from the first canoe ride.

 tree house in the rainforest!

 the view

 canopy bridges

 the view

 little baby frog on my hand!

 rainforest = beautiful

 bird friend i made in coca (town we stopped in before flying back to quito)

 view on the second canoe

 monkey from coca!!! <3

 5:30am canoa beach

 view of all of canoa from the look-out

 swimming at the secret beach!

 hermoso puesto del sol

 friends!!

sunset again :)

cuenca y canoa me crazy!

as of yesterday, i have officially been in ecuador for three whole months. in some ways, it seems like three months and in other regards it feels like i just got here. my friends and i have definitely noticed how the time is whizzing by and we know the next few and final weeks will go by even faster. soooo we have and will continue to follow a strict schedule to make sure we get to see and do everything before our time in ecuador is up. so get ready for some crazy, fun-filled weeks!!!

last weekend, a small group of friends and i went to cuenca. cuenca is an adorable town known for its rich history and art and culture. its actually the third largest city in ecuador by population but it doesnt feel like that when you are there. we left thursday night on the over night bus thinking it would take about 10 hours. well, two popped tires and 13 hours later, we finally arrived! we found a cute hostal for $7 a night that had a balcony that overlooked the restaurant-filled streets and the beautiful river. we had an awesome lunch at an italian restaurant then spent the day touring the city. we went in the New Cathedral of Cuenca, Parque Calderon, Museum of Aboriginal Cultures, and saw Incan ruins. we even stumbled upon a mini-bird zoo that had the most parrots and parakeets and eagles that i have ever seen in my life! after hardly getting any sleep on the over night bus and spending the entire day walking, we took a well-deserved afternoon nap. we finally woke up just in time to get some delicious mexican food and celebrate my friend molly's birthday!
the next day we got up early and caught a 2 hour bus to the incan ruins, called Ingapirca. oh before i tell more about the ruins, let me just say that the bus ride was one of the weirdest i have ever taken. first of all, we bought our tickets and were told to catch the bus outside. after asking ever person in the bus terminal which bus we were supposed to take, we realized that everyone was just trying to get us to come on their bus - no matter if they were headed towards the ruins or not. finally, we were told to follow this man, sprint outside the gates of the terminal and down six blocks to catch the bus. oh and if this werent crazy enough, we got on the bus to find out they had given our seats away to other people so we had to stand the entire time. but this was fate! i was standing next to a girl and said something funny and she started laughing. and i said "what?" ...she responded "oh its just i havent heard jokes in english in a while because ive been traveling around here for 6 months." well we got to talking and discovered that she goes to UNC and is a public health major as well!! what are the chances? this world really is uber small. she was really cool and we ended up going to her crepe restaurant for dinner in cuenca later that night! anyway, so back to Ingapirca... they are the largest Incan ruins in all of ecuador and the place has one of the most beautiful views i have ever seen! we spent the day there, shopped at the little markets, grabbed some cheap food at an almuerzo place and then headed back to the city. see the pictures below to see how cool this place was!
on our last day in cuenca, we got a delicious breakfast for $2 and then decided we wanted to see el cajas - a national park with rivers, lakes, and streams that everyone told me i needed to visit while in cuenca. the bus to el cajas was full but we convinced the bus driver to let us stand the entire way. but only under one condition he told us: we had to squat down in the aisles as we exited the terminal and had to duck if we saw a policeman or police car anywhere in sight hahaha... so ecuador! but anyway, el cajas was amazing! it was super cold but the view was absolutely worth it. rolling hills, a beautiful lagoon - i couldnt have imagined anything prettier! after an awesome day, a great dinner in cuenca, some more sightseeing around the city, we caught the night bus back to quito and arrived at about 7am dead tired :(

and what got me through this past week, was the fact that i knew i would be spending the weekend in canoa... and you all know how i love my time at the beach! so thursday night, my friends and i caught the night bus to canoa but once again, it wouldnt be ecuador without the transportation trouble. apparently a few months back, the bus company got in an accident and was supposed to fire all of its employees. so as we are driving through ecuador, we got stopped by the police, had to wait two hours while our bus drivers fought with the police, had to wait for another bus company to come and pick us up, got all of our stuff and got on the other bus. we thought we were settled in for good, but after an hour the bus stopped again and made us get back on the bus we were just on - i guess we had lost the cops by this time so they thought it was okay. how secure i felt riding illegally in on a bus operated by a suspended bus company! we got to canoa early friday morning and headed straight for a hostal recommended by lonely planet. it was a blessing in disguise that the hostal was fully booked because we found another one just down the road that turned out to be amazing. actually two dreadheads yelled down from the balcony of the hostal asking if we wanted to stay there, we checked it out, agreed on $7/night with breakfast included and threw our stuff on our bunkbeds. we quickly realized we were this hostal's first guests... some of the beds still had plastics wrappers on them, the dreadheads had to call the owner and ask if $7/night was okay, and the electricity and light was not quite up and functioning. anyway, we thought it would be a fun hostal to stay at since it was beachfront and right in the mix of things. AND WE WERE RIGHT! i absolutely loved montañita with all of my heart, and i think i loved canoa just as much - if that gives you a sense of how cool of a place it was. the owner of the hostal was an ex-professor from the states who has 5 masters degrees and a PhD and decided to travel ecuador for a year. he stopped in canoa, fell in love, and decided to turn this run down bar into a new bar with a hostal on top called "el caracol". AKA HE IS LIVING MY DREAM LIFE! we spent every day at the beach, ate delicious street foods and batidos or at the surf shak next door, and spent the evenings in the bar in the bottom of our hostal hanging out with the locals. we even got free surf lessons one day! we were super sad to go home on sunday because we had had such a good time and met so many cool people, and it was then that we decided we would return in a few weeks. its only a 6.5 hour bus ride and the hostal is so cheap and fun - my friends and i decided it would be worth it to return. we hope our second trip lives up to our expectations!

i leave for a trip with my school to a biodiversity station in the rainforest this friday! so so so stoked for that trip and all the amazing trips in my future :) SOY UNA CHICA CON SUERTE thats for sure.

paz, amor, y gozo
-shannon

 cuenca

 girls in cuenca plaza

 cuenca at night

 ruinas de ingapirca

 el cajas

 lagoon at el cajas

 we are spelling UNC if you cant tell!

 river in cuenca

 canoa!

 beautiful beach

 cliffs of canoa

 back to us at el cajas

 and the ruins once again

one more from canoa!

wide open spaces

last weekend was a quito weekend. my friend's boyfriend was in town so we had to show him the city and do all the touristy things. on friday, we went to my favorite little cafe for the most delish and cheap lunch and then spent the day downtown in el centro. i finally went in the amazing museums and churches quito is famous for. there is one church we call the "gold church" because literally 85% of the inside is made from gold! it is so beautiful and wicked cool to see, but unfortunately no cameras allowed, so you all should just come to quito and see for yourself. we also ventured six blocks up a 45 degree-angled hill to see the cathedral. wow, now that is something spectacular! it is bigger than one could believe, has amazing stain glassed windows, and ridiculous architecture work. and then we went where no gringo is supposed to go - the black market. we knew the general area of where it was located, but had to ask about 5143534 people who all gave us different directions. finally, when one woman said "oh are you looking for the market with all the robbed stuff?" we knew she would point us in the right direction because thats exactly what we were looking for! see i needed a new cell phone, didnt want to pay $60 for one, didn't really care if it was old or used or stolen, and so the black market was my destination. and my was it worth it! i got a phone in really good shape for $20 (my friend has the exact same one and he paid $55 for it... sucker). we hung around downtown for the rest of the day, had a very overpriced but delicious pizza dinner, and then went to la ronda because all visitors need to spend a night at la ronda! we got some canelazo, watched street performers, and listened to good ecuadorian music - exactly what la ronda is known for! oh andddd listen to this: a random ecuadorian came up to my guy friends, asked them if they could put on these brand new ecua shoes (picture a cheaper version of chuck taylors and everyone wears them around here) and asked if he could take their picture. maybe an ad campaign of some sort for the ecua shoes with the tag line "gringos wear them too" ...? we didn't know what was going on but after the guys had their photo shoot the guy said they could keep the shoes! ahh i've been dying to get my own pair of ecua shoes and now my guys got them for free... so jealous.
on saturday, i spent the day with the Melos. and it was extra special because it was the last day Ale was in town for her spring break from Georgetown! they picked me up midday, i had an awesome vegetarian lunch at their house, and then just hung out basically. pia showed me her beautiful ceramics pieces, i helped ale go through old things and pack up her bag, and just had a very relaxing day in their amazing home. and if they weren't generous enough - they even took me out to dinner later that night at a very nice oriental restaurant where we feasted on spring rolls, dumplings, fried rice, and sushi YUM! i love having them so close to me in quito! and sunday was a very chill day spent doing homework, taking a run in the beautiful weather, and talking on the phone with the fam. a great ending to a relaxing weekend!
so i was really upset when this weekend rolled around and my friends and i realized we didnt really have anything planned. i love quito, but i love traveling the country more and i just think its a waste to spend two straight weekends in the same town! but luckily, i got invited camping. remember those guys i mentioned that i met in montañita but they just so happen to go to USFQ with me? well they and some of their friends were planning an overnight camping trip near cotopaxi mountain and invited me and 5 of my friends along. so saturday morning, we met up at the school, stocked up on food and drinks at supermaxi, and hit the road! this was one of my first adventures in ecuador where the mode of transportation was not a bus. i must admit, ecuadorian drivers are scary and bad, but you get places a whole lot quicker by car, that's for sure. after about an hour and a half, we arrived at the entrance to a camp site near cotopaxi, but when the police told us it was going to be $5 a person and they were going to take our drinks and food away we said no thanks. one of my ecua friends knew another entrance through machachi that didnt include any lame policemen! so i thought, ya know, the entrance would be right down the road a few miles or something, well i was completely wrong. the ecua boys didnt know the exact route, the roads were unpaved and in the country, and we had to stop at a farm and help these guys get their car out of the mud. luckily we had good friends and good music so our road trip across all of ecuador was actually really enjoyable! finally, we reached the entrance and the only reason we were allowed to pass through was because one of my friends knew the owner of the farm... how lucky?! and it was beyond worth the wait! we were the only people within hundreds of miles in this completely wide open and natural "desert" in ecuador! it was one of the coolest things: green grass, huge boulders, gigantic rolling hills, snowcapped mountains, wild horses, wild bulls, volcano eruption remnants, and 3 cars full of crazy ecuas and gringos! after getting stuck in the mud and stopping numerous times to take pictures of the amazing scenery and animals, we finally made our way to a lagoon at the base of cotopaxi mountain - ecuador's most famous mountain. it was already getting dark, but it was still one of the most beautiful things i had ever seen. we set up tents, tried to make a fire, basically failed, and so we had a "dinner" of a few pretzels and some peanuts. we were roughin' it. it was absolutely freezing (we were at the foot of a snowcapped mountain) - even with four layers and a sleeping bag - so the majority of us ended sleeping in the cars haha i guess we weren't reallyyyy roughin' it. but got a pretty good sleep, even though it was still so cold in the car, and woke up early enough to see the sun rising, the moon setting, and the sky the coolest shade of blue i have ever seen! we hit the road a few hours later and thankfully it only took us two hours to get back home. that made me happier than ever because i was about to eat my left arm... remember i hadn't really eaten much since the muffin i had had at 10am the day before. so the eggs and toast i made back at home in quito tasted like a 5-star meal!
...so two really fun weekends as usual. it's crazy because i have now been here for over two months and have only two months left! time flies when you are having fun and i'm going to do whatever it takes to jam pack my weekends so i can do everything and see everything that needs to be done and seen in ecuador before i leave! cuenca, the rainforest, galapagos, back to montañita, canoa, and otovalo just to name a few :)

hope you are enjoying life as much as i am.

PAZ, scm

p.s. pictures of this amazing camping trip to come soon!

 plaza grande in el centro

 church in plaza san francisco

 cathedral

 beautiful!

 friends in the plaza!

 view from the lookout at our campsite

 cotopaxi... we camped right at the base at the lagoon

 wide open spaces!

 a donkey came to our car

some friends :)

¡el mejor fin de semana de mi vida!

everyone says you know you've fallen in love when you have butterflies in the stomach, a beaming and constant smile, and that "can't get you out of my head" feeling. well if that's true, i have definitely fallen in love. no no not with some ecuadorian hunk, i have fallen in love with montañita. montañita is a beach in the middle of the ecuador coast, about 3 hours outside of guayaquil and i was lucky enough to spend my entire carnaval there. oh carnaval is basically like the mardi gras of ecuador. from the friday to tuesday before lent starts, ecuador goes wild, especially at the beaches. spraying people with foam, throwing buckets of water on people's heads, 24/7 celebrations - everything goes during carnaval. my friends and i had been planning on going to montañita for carnaval for a while because we heard about an awesome surf competition being held there. and when i told my host family and other friends that i was planning on spending carnval in montañita, they all said i was going to have a great time, but i needed to prepare myself for craziness. so we prepared by buying masks, poppers, fireworks, face paint, whistles, beads, and other obnoxious party things and we were SO ready for carnaval!
at 11pm thursday night, my 10 closest friends and i boarded the bus to guayaquil. 8 loooonnnggg hours later we arrived, and boarded another bus that would take us to montañita. even though it was early and we had hardly slept a wink on the overnight bus, we were too excited to sleep and within 3 hours we finally were at the beach! and i fell in love pretty much immediately. montañita is a small surfing town with probably 1000 inhabitants. the 4 roads that run through the town are lined with quaint hostals, delicious batido (juice/shake) stands, empanada, hamburger, and ceviche carts, and people selling jewelry and artwork. our hostal, montezuma, was 1 block from the beach and had delicious meals for $2. we squeezed 11 people in 1 room (my mom said "ew" when i told her that), but we had 5 beds that became sandy and sheetless in 1 day, a bathroom that was a stinky swamp by saturday, and a balcony with a hammock from which you could see the beach! when we arrived, we headed right for the beach. it was the friday before carnaval, so all the tourists hadn't quite arrived but the beach was still pretty crowded. even so, it was awesome... extremely beautiful, extremely hot, but the water was the perfect temperature. spent the whole day at the beach, met some interesting people, and after "showering" (aka 20 second rinse off in freezing cold water) we watched an amazing sunset. i've seen some pretty breathtaking sunsets in my day at caswell, but this was definitely one for the books. after sunset, my friends and i then walked around the streets of montañita, met even more interesting people (and when i say interesting i mean super weird but really cool!), and had a fabulous dinner. the evenings/nights are what make montañita montañita. literally everyone in the town is out about either selling stuff on the curbs, entertaining, or walking around... it's indescribable! seriously, as i write this, i'm thinking wow montañita doesn't sound that exciting but i guess i just can't put into words its amazingness. there's such a welcoming feeling and a sense of community and excitement and free spirits ahh just thinking about it makes me want to go back right now! that night we went to a beach club that had tribal dancers and bongo drums, and i even got painted in glow in the dark paint (and that was the beginning of me wearing paint for 5 days straight). i don't really know what we did for the next like 10 hours, but i stayed out long enough to watch the sunrise on the beach - a sunset and sunrise all in one day!!! and after only about 2 hours of sleep, we got up and repeated! by saturday, all the tourists had arrived and the beach was packed. but that didnt keep us from spending all day at the beach with some naps here and there. funny thing is - the whole reason we had wanted to go to montañita was because of the surf competition that is held every year during carnaval, so it was pretty ironic to find out that this year the competition had been held in february instead! but it was fine because there was still plenty of surfing to be seen and plenty of hot surfer guys to look at and make me jealous that i didnt have a surf board with me. we watched the sunset again, had delicious and cheap street food for dinner, and hung out on the streets of montañita at night, and gathered in an internet café to watch UNC crush dOOk in basketball YEAH HEELS! i met really cool people from all over the world - there was a guy from atlanta who had come to ecuador for fun and owned a batido shop on the beach (my inspiration for wanting to live there!), 3 guys from argentina who were traveling south america and making a video for facebook (keep an eye out for me in their vids!), a tattoo artist from columbia who had just moved to the beach, and 2 really nice boys who go to USFQ - my university near quito. although we pretty much did the same thing every day - beach, sunset, craziness at night, sun rise - every day was beyond fun! oh and remember how i mentioned the foam earlier? yeah, i would guessitmate i got foamed about 6 times per day, so i just stopped caring about what i was wearing / what i looked like and stayed in my bathing suit, shorts, and bare feet all day long. when tuesday finally rolled around, none of us were ready to leave. i seriously considered calling my parents, telling them i was dropping out of school, and staying at the beach. but i thought that wouldn't go over too well so we boarded the bus to guayaquil at 5:30pm. we heard the bus ride home from guayaquil would be about 10 hours so we caught the 9pm bus from there back to quito. what they didn't tell us was that our bus driver was a crazy man with road rage. picture a 50 passenger bus going 120mph, weaving in and out of cars, while winding through the Andes Mountains. yep, that was our bus. so instead of getting back to quito at 7am we got home at 4am and had to find cabs at the crack of dawn! a $4 cab ride and 40 minutes later (that's expensive, man!), i was in my bed at home and sound asleep. i slept for the next 12 hours, but that seemed fine since i had probably gotten about a total of 8 hours during our 5 days in montañita. BUT IT WAS SO WORTH IT! if you can't read spanish the title of this blog is "the best weekend of my life" and although that might not be entirely true, spending carnaval in montañita was definitely one of the best times of my life! i even cried that wednesday night we got back to quito because i missed montañita so much... lame i know, but that shows my true feelings!
well, as many of you know, my grandpa is very sick and right before i left for the beach, they brought him home to my house. i felt guilty having such a great time in montañita because of what he was going through, but i sent him a video and got the go-ahead from my family to have fun - because that's what Cal would want me to do. and when i returned home, i got all the emails and videos from house and it sounds like my family was having just as much fun celebrating Cal's life back in VA as i was having at the beach!

so once again, i am having the most amazing time in ecuador - learning a lot and meeting cool and interesting people who challenge my ideas and make me think differently about this world - and i am just so thankful for this opportunity to live and study in ecuador. i really do wish i could be back at home with the fam during this difficult time, but i'm pretty sure i'm right where i am supposed to be.

viva la vida,
shannon <3

p.s. and a special shout out to my roommates at unc, chelsea and erin, who just found out they will be studying abroad! chels in china and erin in argentina - oh man y'all, get ready for the time of your lives!!!

view of montañita from our balcony!

sunset! 

the perfect day!

painted and foamed - story of my life.

we <3 montañita

the best trip to the BATHROOMS ever!

CONGRATULATIONS DILLON AND CAROL! ya know this is the first family wedding i've missed and hopefully the last. i heard it was an awesome ceremony and i know everyone had fun... hello we are the murphys so we always have fun!

i'm going to start with what happened laaaast weekend because as ush, i'm a little behind on blogging. yeahyeah typical...

aliceann's friend from college, mika, and mika's mom, nini, were in town last weekend so we decided to hang around quito. but even though we didn't travel anywhere doesnt mean we didnt have an adventure... i swear, craziness follows us. friday night we wanted to listen to a bongo drum band, but upon arriving at the club, we were informed that it was $5.50 to see the band. $5.50?! really? obvi that is waaaay too much to pay for a concert so we went to a dance club called next level that we had gone to the night before. good dancing, good music, etc. but here's where it got interesting: we left the club a little before midnight, expecting an empty street (the street in front of next level is alwayyyysss empty!)... but no. there were probably 300 people on the street, 100 guys with AK47s, and 100 policemen evacuating the club across the street. a bomb threat maybe? it's ecuador so who knows. anyway, we are just standing on the sidewalk observing the craziness when this drunk guy completely face plants in the middle of the street! he slowly sits up, showing everyone his bloody face and teeth-missing mouth. i was really scared for this guy so of course i had to be shannon save-the-world murphy and went and helped the guy. i tried communicating with these guys around the bloody guy, but no one knew him, no one knew what had happened, it was all a mess. after getting his blood on my arms (there's a possibility i have AIDS now) and the other guys wiping the blood off his face, a nice man in a suit said we should try to lift him into the back of the police truck to take him to the hospital. please note: yes, there are still about 200 policemen on the street right now. not one of them has come over to help. soooo as the guy in the suit is lifting the bloody/blackout drunk man into the back of the police truck the police start driving away and the suit guy and bloody guy go tumbling into the street! can you believe that??? if this is not the perfect example of the corruption and laziness and worthlessness of the ecuadorian police, then i dont know what is. so that was a great start to the weekend! hahaha.
saturday was pretty relaxing... i took a walk, bought 5 DVDs for $3, chilled at a friends house, and went to la ronda to enjoy canelazos and $1 empanadas with friends.
sunday was also a fabulous day. the melos (just in case you are confused at the relationship... pia is monica's aunt, sofia and ale are gaby's aunts but younger than gaby! they live in quito and im just so happy that they do) invited me to an art exhibit and lunch. the exhibit was for the IB art students at sofia's school. sofia really hated all the artwork, but i thought it was pretty darn good for high schoolers! afterwards we went for sushi lunch at a place called Noe. being a vegetarian, i've always said i hated sushi aka i was just really scared of it. but i think sushi might be in my top 3 favorite foods now! i had a delish veggie soup with tofu, then vegetable sushi rolls, anndddd sofia insisted that we get the cheesecake with toblerone pieces on top, and you know i didnt complain. ahh it was such a great meal and i love hanging out with the melos so i think i might try to make this the weekly sunday routine!

on to this past weekend...

while the murphy fam was wedding-it-up in chicago and my UNC friends were dancing the night away at dance marathon, i was experiencing probably my favorite ecuador trip thus far in baños. preface: at our study abroad orientation, they told us we could not visit baños because there is a volcano erupting. after consulting lonely planet and seeing the volcano has only eruped 3 times in the past 12 years, we made a group decision and decided thursday night that is was okay to travel to baños (p.s. baños means BATHROOMS in spanish...?). so after a very delish meal at aliceann's abuelita's downtown cafe, we hopped on the trole and travelled south! and once again, as per usual, we cant disappoint - we encountered some travel problems. trying to make the 2:30 bus to baños, we arrived just in time, got all of our tickets, and bought 2 tickets for our friends cole and liz who said they were right behind us. well, when 2:35 rolled around and cole and liz called to say they were 4 bus stops away, it was panic time. the lady at the desk said she would hold the bus 6 more minutes and if they didnt get here in time we would have to go without them. so dilemma: wait in the terminal for our friends and hope the bus doesnt leave before it says it will, or screw our friends and hop on the bus? good friends rule! we waited and literally with 20 seconds to spare, liz and cole came sprinting into the bus terminal and we made it! 3.5 hours later we were in baños!
baños is a quaint town (a little bigger than mindo) known for its outdoor activities and cool nightlife- which we did not know before going there. so we walked around the plaza and eventually found a hostal - hostal carolina (how ironic!) - for $7 a night. we had an awesome american dinner at this hippie cafe, sat on the rooftop terrace of our hostal, then went downtown to enjoy the strip of nightlife. crazy cool clubs with awesome music, fun bars, and street performers who encouraged us to dance and play their instruments with them. you know i have no musical talent, but performing with that street music group was definitely a highlight of my trip.. i felt so cool! and i think it was a good move on the band's part to include some gringos because i think we attracted the most attention they have ever ever received. for real, people whipped their phones and cameras to record a bunch of gringo girls dancing and playing the drums in the ecuadorian street band.
saturday we woke up early, ate a delicious breakfast and perused the baños market. it was the first time i've met any vendors who would not bargain their prices! i tried to get a $2 bracelet down to $1.50 and the guy was not having it one bit. after the market, we headed to the center of town to get organized for our canyoning adventure! what is canyoning you ask? oh just repelling down 150 foot waterfalls for 4 hours for $16. yep it's true... we all climbed in the back of a pick up truck, picked up our wetsuits and "watershoes" (they werent watershoes at all, they were definitely blue keds) and met our canyoning guides at one of the largest waterfalls i have ever seen (yep, right about the time carol and dillon were saying their "I do's" and my dance marathon friends were wanting to give up, i was just flying down the side of a waterfall)! after suiting up, we began the decent down to the bottom. we would hook our ropes to some metal clips and repel down the side of waterfalls - i cant describe it any other way. the first waterfall was dinky, the second we slid down like a slide, but the third was awesome! i'm pretty sure it was 150 ft tall or more and because it was so tall, we couldnt really repel so we just basically slid down a rope until we reached the bottom of the waterfall... it was sooooo fun! and after hiking up an unpaved trail and crawling under a barbed-wire fence with our canyoning instructor, we got to go down the last waterfall a second time. so all in all it was 100% worth the $16! after canyoning, we basically repeated friday night: good dinner, hangout on the terrace, and going out in "downtown" baños. dont worry, i did indeed have another jam sesh with the ecuadorian street band. oh and just to let you know: upon arriving home from canyoning, completely disgusting from wearing old wetsuits and dirty keds all day, we discovered that our hostal did not provide towels therefore, we had to go out in public, unshowered and smelling like moldy old life preservers... typical gringos in ecuador.
sunday we woke up early again because we had a lot of fun activities to squeeze in before our bus ride back to quito. we had an awesome breakfast at our friends' hostal down the road... i know i always describe the breakfasts as "awesome" or "delish" but honestly i have not had a bad breakfast yet! eggs, bread, juice, hot chocolate all for like $3, so whats not to love? after breakfast a few of us rented go karts. the others were skeptical because they thought we would just be riding around the crowded little streets, but they were wrong. we got to drive on the baños highway (dont worry mom, it wasnt an I-95 type highway but we still were riding in between trucks and cars)! after a little bit, we got out and took a quick trip to the zoo. we saw cool monkeys, sloth-type things, a bear, and a jaguar! if i were a zoo animal, i would definitely pick the baños zoo as my home - all the cages were outdoors in the lush green canyon with the beautiful sun shining above.  oh, and i would really like to be a monkey at the baños zoo because the animals had found a little hole in the cage, were escaping, and swinging from tree branches in the middle of the zoo! so ecuador. we drove our go karts back, did a quick spin around the plaza that included driving the wrong way down a one-way road, and then returned the karts after an hour.... for a grand total of $5 per person. how cool!?! with a couple of hours to spare before our bus departure, we did what we came to baños to do - puenting. lonely planet describes it as "an innovation in freefall insanity; bungee jumping without the bounce" and that's exactly what it was: insanity! puenting crudely translates as "bridging" but its really swinging along a rope tethered to two bridges. it was a little eerie arriving to the bridge and looking over the sides at the ravine we were going to be jumping into, but my friends and i all knew we werent leaving baños without puenting. not seeming too afraid, all my friends voted me to go first. so i suited up in two harnesses, tripled checked that the guy had tightened every strap and buckled every caribbeaner, and took a deep breath. i climbed on the white chair then swung my legs over to stand on a 2x2 platform overlooking the terrifyingly deep canyon below me. with the extreme wind, i couldnt really hear what the instructor was saying but all of a sudden "uno, dos, tres" was loud and clear so i dove off the platform! it was the biggest rush i have ever felt for sure. free falling for probably only 2 seconds, but swinging back and forth for 30 seconds or so - it was awesome! the scariest part was once i had stopped swinging, i was literally just dangling hundreds of feet below the bridge and above the canyon waiting for the instructor to reel me in. all of my friends jumped too, and only one of them had to be pushed! yayyy for crazy gringo friends :) and the best part? we talked the guys down from $20 to $10/person. each person actually only had $10 left at this point in the weekend, but it felt great to bargain that well hehehe. so whoever comes to visit me... we are going to baños and puenting for sure! we had a 4 hour bus ride back to quito then about another hour on the trains to get home, but i still cannot get over how great the weekend was.
i am just so blessed to be here in ecuador for the semester and so thankful for everything i am learning, the people im meeting, and the experiences i am having. a big thank you to my parents (aka the bank) for letting/allowing this all to happen! love you.
i hope everyone else had a fabulous weekend as well and stay tuned for next week :)

mucho mucho amor,
shanaynaynay

 la plaza in baños

 view from a treehouse!

 go karts!

 oh hey cool cat at the zoo

 there i go....

 i'm still alive!

 friends and i on the terrace of the hostal... cool views all around

canyoning!

la playa y los paquedores

hola familia y amigos! i really hope people are tuning in to read my blog, but i also hope the attachment is not so strong that since i haven't posted in 2 weeks you think i am dead. i've just been busy, busy, busy doing crazy cool things...

so last weekend it was two of my friends' birthdays and we took out first trip to la costa (the coast)! i am the daughter of connie and brian, so you probably can guess i was super excited to go to the beach. thursday night at midnight, five other friends and i got on the overnight bus en route to tonsupa en las esmeraldas, but we are in ecuador so of course there was some transportation craziness. well it turns out that my super smart friends bought us the wrong tickets so please picture 6 gringos running back and forth between two buses trying to explain in spanish that we know our ticket says one place but we really want to go to the other place. we literally put our packs under and boarded each bus three times, all the while being laughed at by the ecuadorians, until finallyyyyy we made it onto a bus that was going in the direction of tonsupa. after 5 hours on the night bus, one of those hours being spent sleeping and the other four being spent trying to get comfortable in the hotter than hell bus, we were dropped off in the middle of a cornfield. yes, this is real life. thankfully my friend aliceann was not still in a sleep-coma like the rest of us and figured out which bus we needed to get on. so once again, us gringos put on a show for the ecuadorians as we sprinted across a cornfield/parking lot with all of our stuff to hop on a bus just as it was driving away. so the next bus was a quick 30 minutes, and by 7am friday morning, we were in our bathing suits and drinking mimosas in an apartment on the beach! the apartment belongs to my friend's family so they let us stay in it... unfortunately there were no pillows, no sheets on the bed, no towels, no toilet paper, no soap, no bowls, no gasoline for the stove, and no running water on the first day. and it cost us each $10 a night. i guess i shouldn't be complaining because we did have a roof over our heads... and a pool!
friday was pretty rainy, but we rented a cute little tent on the beach for $1 for the whole day and when it would stop sprinkling we would head to the ocean! ah i love the ocean and it was surprisingly warm. of course not caswell beach warm, but a very enjoyable temperature. and oh my goodness the sunset was to die for! please see pictures below. anyway, friday was spent walking back and forth from the beach, eating delicious foods in the cute little beachfront restaurants, playing in the pool, and celebrating the birthdays of course! saturday was extreme beach day... blue skies, shining sun, warm water... so great! until 5pm rolled around and i realized my spf 70 and irish skin are no match for the ecuadorian sun. yep, a week later and i still have a pink chest, sensitive shoulders, and a peeling nose. typical. thennn naturally, sunday was a day of rest. after two days of beaching and sun and celebrations, i took the most wonderful 4 hour nap ever! then the crew and i headed down to a beachfront restaurant and convinced the owner to let us change the tv from the futbol game to the superbowl. I WATCHED THE SUPERBOWL ON THE BEACH IN ECUADOR... how cool is that?! and the packers (or los paquedores if you will) win made it that much better. so then we just cleaned the up the mess we had made of the apartment and boarded the midnight bus back to quito. it was a little rough arriving in quito at 7am after a night on a bus and then having to go to class but the weekend was so fun and so worth it!
this week was swell as well. tuesday night, my friends and i hung out in la ronda - a quaint cobblestone area in old town quito that has cute restaurants and my new obsession: canelazo. its a hot drink made of sugarcane liquor and water but tastes like hot cider oh man so delish. wednesday night, i dont really want to talk about... it might have something to do with the outcome of a certain basketball game between unc and a certain school that i dont like (cough cough dOOk). thursday night, my friend lauren had all the cool extranjeros over to her house for a dinner party! tacos and guac and chocolate cake and good friends... what more could ya want? and friday, i spent the day in quito walking around mercado artesenal and getting harassed by little old women selling gum. but again, thats pretty typical.

 friends!

watching the game! GO UNC :)


hasta luego caiman (see you later alligator just doesnt have the same ring as it does in english)
-shannon

canopy, caballos, y chocolate!

once again another amazing trip this past weekend (and im leaving tomorrow night for the beach!)... i live a tough life, huh?

but before i tell you about the fabulous weekend trip, can i please tell you about the friday night from hell? so last semester, my host family had a girl named nichole who met an ecuadorian, fell madly in love with him, bought an apartment with him (and promise rings), and a couple months later, found herself getting a restraining order against him. the only good thing to come out of this mess? she has a fabulous apartment in downtown/old town quito. from her balcony, you can literally see all of old town quito, beautiful mountains, and it is quiet! so this past friday, nichole and her brother, who are delish cooks, decided to invite us all over for dinner. i left my house at 5:15 and walked down the street in the POURING RAIN to catch a cab. the lady at the cab place informed that they were absolutely no cabs answering their phones since it was rush hour on friday in the rain. i decide to wait in the rain because surely a taxi would come around. 30 minutes pass by. no taxi. i went back inside to change my clothes that were completely drenched and to call (using the house phone bc of course my cell is out of minutes) my friend who was waiting for me at the bus stop and tell her to go ahead without me because i honestly thought i wouldnt make it to the party. so then i went back outside and finally a tax came around. oh but of course the driver had to be in another part of town in 20 minutes so he couldnt take me. why did he even stop? so luckily another taxi came by, but splashes me in the process. he agreed to take me to the bus stop, oh but when he found out i only had a twenty dollar bill he made me get out. 10 minutes and 12 inches of rain later, a taxi came along and was totally willing to take me to the bus and accepts $20! well the bus stop is like a 20 minute walk away, so i figured a 5 minute taxi ride WELL NOT IN RUSH HOUR! literally it took us 30 minutes to get to the bus. okay so i got on the crowded bus and realized i had my phone, camera, and passport in my pocket! dont ask me how all my important valuables ended up with me on the bus after dark. basically, i rode the bus for 40 minutes, not knowing which stop to get off at and just hoping the name will ring a bell when i see it, and end up missing the stop. nichole finally called me (again, i had no minutes on phone and therefore no way of calling anyone), i got back on the bus, walked up two blocks of sketchiness, just barely dodged a man who was tossing buckets of water out his window, and finally made it to nicholes house safely but just 2 hours late. but im on ecuadorian time right? and it all worked out okay bc they were still cooking, and being a vegetarian, i got to get my plate first yayayay!

and on to the weekend... ten friends and i hopped on the bus for MINDO on saturday morning. mindo is a quaint little cloud-forest town northwest of quito. my host family said it would take over 4 hours to get there, but we (and especially my bladder) were all pleasantly surprised when we arrived in just over 2 hours! when we got off the $2.50 bus, we were greeted by claudia, the owner of our hostel. she seemed super cool and sweet, but we realized she was a little creepy when she watched us the entire time we ate breakfast. but when we saw the adorable hostel "el rocio" we realized it was worth putting us with the crazy hostel mccookerson. no but for real, this hostel was precious! a cute outdoor patio for eating,  beautiful flowers and luscious trees surrounding, 10 cute dogs, and the entire upstairs of the hostel (complete with hammocks and bunkbeds and a porch) all for us! all for $10, i love you ecuador.
we immediately changed and headed out to the canopy to do ziplining!! it cost $10 and they told me it was 13 cables, so i just assumed that meant we did one zipline 13 times. oh man was i wrong! we ziplined for over 3 hours, riding down 13 different zipline cables, while overlooking the rainforest. the only downside was it was pouring rain, pouring rain like ive never seen rain pour, pouring rain as in there was not a single dry inch on my body, the type of pouring rain you cant even imagine until you experience it. but im not lying when i say this ziplining experience one of the coolest things i have ever done! and when we were done and freezing cold, they called us a taxi to ride back to our hostel in. but we were so dirty and soaking wet, the man wouldnt let us sit in the car so all 10 of us had to ride in the bed of the truck, dodging tree branches, in the rain. and i STILL think that was one of the most fun things i have ever done! oh and funny story: my friend katy lost one of her shoes while flying 100 feet over the rainforest. it was pretty hilarious to witness but whats even crazier is the ziplining crew found her shoe (just so happened it fell precisely on the only path in the rainforest) and delivered it to the hostel later that night! hahahaha.
the next morning, after enjoying an awesome breakfast FOR FREE at our hostel, some of us went horseback riding. i like horses and its really relaxing riding through the canyons of mindo and i love getting my moneys worth, but really, i will never ride a horse for 2 hours straight ever again. not only were my stirrups 2 feet to short and my saddle made of jagged steel, the horses had already been ridden earlier that morning and were gettin a little fiesty. apparently i got the horse that all the other horses despised. i dodged the other horses' many attempts at ramming me and thankfully made it without being bucked off my horse! after horseback riding, we made a quick stop at the mindo chocolate factory "el quetzel" and bought what was supposedly one of the best brownies ever. the brownie was pretty tasty, but any brownie for $3 in ecuador would be tasty, and i truly think my homemade brownies would give el quetzel a run for their money. and after that, we boarded the bus and headed home to quito! in between ziplining, and horseback riding, and brownie tasting, we did get a good feel of mindo, tested out some of the restaurants and bars, and hiked around a little bit, but there is just so much to do in this cute little town that i definitely want to go back. if you come visit me, i will take you to mindo!

so ive already been in ecuador for a month now and if you cant tell im having a pretty ridiculously amazing time here. even when im hiking uphill for 30 minutes from the bus stop to my house, im loving life! and im stoked that i still have 4 more months here :) oh so blessed!

chau!
shannon

 view from breakfast at our hostal

 in a "cable car" zooming over the rainforest

 ziplining! perfect form.

before the horses attacked....