Hola

After last night’s devastating Packer’s loss, I realized life’s too short to not blog.

Just kidding, I don’t care about the Packers. However, I do care about Microsoft Word, so I’ll give them my business.  

I would like to start by saying how difficult it was for me to refrain from an alliterative title.  However, every time I tried to pair a word with “Ecuador,” it ended up sounding like a South American version of a Ford SUV (ex: Ecuadorian Excursion).

The beginning is usually the best place to start, but summing up four months of my existence seems entirely too daunting. Instead, I’ll start with last night and the whole thing can be like a mystery novel. How exciting.

As South America is not the most ideal corner of the world for locating NFL playoff games, I was extremely excited to hear that one of my favorite Lojano bars, La Mancha, was playing the Saturday competitions. It was a bit odd to watch football in this place composed of used books, original art, and set in the living room of some long-forgotten Ecuadorian family. It was the first time this awesome library-bar felt truly foreign, given that there were only two of us in the room who knew how to use the term “touchdown” correctly. But what do I really care now that the Skins are out? Time to take more interest in the puck-maneuvering Russians.

This morning a group of four of us hopped on a bus to Vilcabamba, a strange little world about an hour outside of Loja. It’s a town composed of native Ecuadorians, American hippies, and retired expats who seem to hate all the hippies. The majority of the foreigners have not bothered to learn Spanish in their multiple years of living in Vilca, making it a less than ideal place to practice Spanish or meet the locals. However it’s wonderful for ice cream, Saturday night bonfires, and making me feel amazing about my hair (read: dreads everywhere).

However this morning was not about spending a day in town, but rather on top of it. Our mission was to hike up Mandango, a mountain on the outskirts of Vilca. We set off with sunscreen, water, and a pound of uvillas for sustenance. After about two hours and a bit of scrambling, we made it to the top and were rewarded with a dazzling view of the valley below. Once we were done soaking in the scenery and patting ourselves on the back, we crashed through shrubbery and slid back down the mountain with lunch at the forefront of our minds. After we let gravity do its thing, we walked to a nearby restaurant and feasted on pizza, pina coladas, and pilsener (that’s the name of the beer, I didn’t spell pilsner wrong; back up off me). It was a sleepy bus ride back and now it’s time to go scrub the dirt and leaves off of me before an early bedtime.  If I don’t write another blog for a while it’s most likely because I’ve contracted a fatal disease from the mountain. Someone send me bug spray. Goodnight.