Intestines don´t like intestines

Well, it´s been a fun adventure since I last wrote. We spent one more full day in Montañita, where we surfed/bodyboarded in the morning (while getting absolutely fried despite putting on sunscreen twice) and then hung out in the afternoon reading and interneting. Cooked dinner again, two pounds of calamari which we got for two dollars (gutted ourselves) with a little soy sauce-rice-vegetable concoction. Delish. And we got to meet and hang out with two of Chris´ fellow volunteers, Laura and Alea.

Next day we hopped on an afternoon bus after a morning of switching off on bodyboards and an awesome lunch. This began our journey to the next location in Vilcabamba, a hiking hotspot of southern Ecuador. The afternoon bus went back to Guayaquil, and we waited for a few hours to take an overnight bus to Loja. This is also where the trip started to take a turn for the worst, i.e. intestinal issues. Essentially, my entire time in Loja was spent in the hostel room, which was actually really nice. Chris had already been to Vilcabamba a few times and knew of a hostel called Izchaluma, a really nice place run by two German brothers (Peter and Deither). Our first afternoon there, we all just hung out. The second day, the other three went for a sweet hike (i.e. the Death Hike) called the Mandango loop, which takes you on a great ridge hike for a few hours. On the way back, they got some lunch, consisting of, you guessed it, cow intestines. Chris had eaten them before and thought them alright.

That just lead to more trouble. In the following days, Mack, Chris, and Justin all got sick. It was a fun-filled few days in Vilcabamba. Not much else to tell, or at least anything that you would probably want to hear. We did get to meet another peace corp volunteer, Corrie, who was really nice and put up with our sickness for a night.

Chris headed back to his site on Sunday, where we instead stayed in the town for the day since Justin was too sick to travel, moved to another hostel which was also very nice called Jardín Escondido. Following day we went to Chris´ site, arriving late at night.

The three days we´ve been here, we set up some computers at the local elementary school, played voli and indoor (i.e. soccer on cement), read a bunch (getting close to done with paradise lost finally), and today went to the parque nacional podocarpus outside of Zamora, which was awesome.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I´ll post some in LA in about a week.