My ankle performed wonderfully during our hike. My lungs, however, were trying their best but were not as up to par as my limbs. And afterward we were rewarded with an hour at a hot spring pool, which has water kept warm geothermally since the mountains are volcanic.
Here are some pictures from our hike of Paluguillo. I'm a terrible photographer.
View on the way to the top of Paluguillo
This is my professor, Esteban, pausing on one of our many stops along the hike to point out natural features - in this case, the cushion plant next to him and the relative warmth of its decomposing inside. The lower on mountain, the fewer cushion plants you will see.
Icy, muddy conditions ain't no thang for these highly adapted plants. Not highly adapted humans though.
These plants are related to the plants most common in dinosaur times.
We had some pretty wonderful views during our hike. This is solidly located in the grassy páramo ecosystem, note the tussock grasses abundance.
Look what a tiny trickle through a field can turn into!
This is part of a giant rosette. Note the tiny blue flowers inside of the protective hair-like fibers.
Esteban explains his backup career plan, and we give it a try.
And then we had Thursday and Friday off from school. Conveniently, my Certificado de Visación - which I’d stupidly left in the scanner back in Charlotte - came in the mail that morning and I was able to get everything together to register my visa in Quito with Kari and Savannah. We ate at KFC
Yes I know. I don't even go there when I'm in the US, but Natacha recommended we eat there because it's clean, and I ordered the most Ecuadorian thing on the menu; it was called the "Supercombo 2"
Then we made our way onto the bus to Mindo.
On the bus, I heard and enjoyed this song:
Notable things we did in Mindo (for better and more pictures, please visit Savannah’s post) :
Made friends with Kurt from San Francisco and Ari from London at our hostel the night we arrived and decided to hang out with them the following day.
Had breakfast with them.
This is cafe con leche, scrambled eggs (completely cooked, parents stop freaking out.), a roll with butter and jam, and naranjilla juice, which is an orange-esque fruit native to the Quito area.
This was the view from the breakfast area of the hostel.
Went to the Mariposario, aka butterfly garden, made friends with them and saw their incredible adaptations.
Me making butterfly friends. This fellow suffered some sort of wing injury but was doing alright in the conservatory.
Cocoons are pretty awesome. I especially admire the ones on the bottom few rows that look like dead leaves. And note the ones that are shiny - they are imitating water droplets and belong to butterflies that hatch near bodies of water.
Another butterfly friend I made
Went to Mindo Lindo, which is a short taxi ride to a cloud forest nature conservatory with lots of hummingbirds and tons of cool flora.
One of the hummingbirds at Mindo Lindo. My favorite one was the booted racket-tail, which I didn't get on camera.
Can you see the bright blue beetle?
Pretty cool flower.
Ate lunch. My meal had the word “criollo” in it, but that’s all I remember.
At some point walked by a restaurant that serves drinks and snacks at a bamboo shack to customers as they sit on swings, and heard this song. It sounded vaguely Chinese and immediately caught my ear.
Got up super early to catch the bus back on Saturday to make it to Milena’s extravagant 2nd birthday party with her parents’ family and friends, but also to nap and read 9 research papers for class.
The lady on the near right is Natacha, my host mom. Yes that is a blow-up slide. Yes, there are people setting up a cotton candy stand and getting ready to have the Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes filled.
Everything was Minnie Mouse themed, with 4 varieties of desserts. This is the tennis court in the neighborhood park.
Yes, the several households involved in this event had their hired help cater the event. There were sausage sanduches and lots of sodas.
Milena's 2nd birthday, sponsored by Kiwa all natural Andean vegetable chips - her parents' company. And a total of 104 pink sprinkled cupcakes, made by her grandma Natacha.
Milena after posing for several pictures.
So I have quite a bit of work this week, and we have another field trip either on Wednesday or Thursday to a montane cloud forest to study biodiversity. I don't think I will be updating very much these few days, but bear with me and know that I am safe and getting stuff done.
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