W(a)NDERINGS: These days

These days…

Well it’s certainly been awhile since I’ve written, and for that, I’m sorry. So much has happened that I feel like I can hardly even keep up myself! But let me try…

These days, we’ve been coming along on the farm… still working every day to prepare the land, get compost and just recently, we even started some seedlings! We have almost all 7 beds finished minus a shit load of shit (pardon my French), cow shit to be exact. Today we trekked to a neighboring ranch to gather cow poop for manure for the beds. It was a sticky and stinky process, but so worth it for the delicious veggies that will be happily growing there in a matter of weeks. Unfortunately, the rest of this week will be spent carrying caca de vaca but… such is life on the farm, and lucky for us we happen to have a river in our backyard to bathe and splash around in after rolling around in poop.

In other news, my project at the school is going… well, it’s going. Challenging not only because of the language or the kids, but also due to some issues with my support system on the other end of it. What’s been really challenging here for me is how much I have to rely on other people for the project to not only go smoothly, but realistically, to function at all. It’s wayyyyy trickier than I had really anticipated to try and conduct a room full of kids, doing art projects supposedly with the theme of environmental awareness and conservation. I am lucky if I leave the school at the end of the day feeling like I have accomplished any one of those things. But, in the end, I really love doing it. It seems that whenever I’m feeling like I’m in wayyyyyyy over my head, driving blind, doing more harm than good, some kid comes up to me on the street, grabs my hand and asks excitedly “when’s the next puppet making class!??!”. And I mean, they keep coming back, more or less of their own accord (classes aren’t until 3 hrs or so after they get out of school) and love to have the opportunity to run around, draw, paint, make puppets and dance. So that’s enough for me, I guess. It’s quite an experience, I can tell you all that much.

And the weekends are another story altogether… they continue to be packed with fun and adventure, especially because I’m living in such a truly amazing place. One of the first weekends Kraig came to visit and a friend (who I met at our weekly Cuban dance class and is also a bird guide here in Mindo) took us canyoning for free!! This involved taking a truck into the woods, hiking along the river, an Indian Jones-style river crossing, climbing basically straight up for about an hour and finally making it to the top of this beautiful waterfall. At the top, we strapped on the borrowed helmets, harnesses and karabiners and proceeded to jump down a 100 m waterfall. No big deal. Other than that, there’s also been a weekend in Quito, one in Otavalo and a couple more in Mindo with visitors. This weekend, Kraig came back (it’s a hard place to stay away from) with Jessica. We happened to run into some other friends from Quito who were visiting for the weekend, so we all came back to the hostel and hung out. On Saturday, we went up to the canopy with our Mindeño friend, Mauro, who led us through the forest to this amazing waterfall called “La Reina” or “the Queen”. This involved a ride in the back of a pickup truck up about 30 or 45 minutes, a ride in a rickety little cart through the clouds above the treetops and a decent hike through the forest to a magical stairway up to the majesty that is La Reina. Because this is the rainy season in Mindo and it consistently downpours every day for an hour or more, I decided to leave my camera. But again, you’ll just have to trust me when I saw this was something straight out of a storybook. Yesterday, we woke up to catch the 6:30 am bus to Quito where we took another bus to the valley of Tumbaco, just outside of the city and met up with another friend, Anna. She and her host sister took us to this adorable little hippy market where we wandered and bought things and got the makings for a delicious picnic. From there, we met up with her family, got in the back of a refrigerator truck and drove up and up and up until we could see all of Quito and the valley and probably all the way to Mindo, and where her family has a little piece of land where they grow corn and beans. I helped her sisters pick 3 huge bags full of “choclos” and then we made a fire and cooked them up right there. We also munched on the homemade bread and cheese, aji, avacado and basil sandwiches, made from the our compras from the market that morning.

Seriously… my life feels like a dream. I’m so happy to be romping around in the great outdoors for the majority of my days, be it working on the farm, repelling down waterfalls or cooking corn on the top of a mountain. I am a woman of the Pacha Mama (Quichua for Mother Earth) and I’m loving every minute of it!!

In the next 4 weeks, I have a 30 page paper to write in Spanish, then I’m free to explore the rest of this GIANT continent. Plan are still in the works for how I’m going to see as much as I can in the 2 ½ months that I have to travel, but recently I’ve been thinking again of going the WWOOFing route in Argentina or Chile or Bolivia. To be honest, the idea of 2 ½ months of travel right now seems exhausting, but I think that’s just because of how I’m feeling right now, and I might change my mind before then. If anyone has ideas or travel tips for South America, feel free to shoot them my way! I’m interested in finding creative alternatives to the usual road more traveled, but we’ll see.

Anyways, I have tons and tons and tons of pictures to share so I’m going to work on putting those on Flickr and will try and do a better job of keeping this baby updated for the rest of my time here in Mindo.

Lots and lots and lots of love from the middle of the world!

Maria-Teresa

Flores!

Vacas!
Amigos!
Mas amigos!
Naza!