Homestay - Week 4

Here are some photos from my homestay in Atuhalpa, about 20 minutes from Tena along the river. I lived with my host family, a single mom with two sons, but really had many more kids hanging around every day (it took me until my last day to figure out who was really related to who and what their names all were). The kids love taking pictures with the camera so there are more pictures of me this week than usual.

Where I lived

Eddie, one of the cousins, was freakin adorable

Crocodillo on the wall

Crocodillo on my head

My host mom, Michi - single mom who consistently feeds an army of kids and friends after working in the fields all day, she was a champion

The party for the anniversary of the town the night I met my family. Everyone danced for a very long time, more than most people really wanted to I think

Either he was trying to hit me or trying to laugh. Either way he wasn't actually drinking, I think.

Nadir, on the left, one of the sons, was a funny kid and was always joking around with me

Here's me with a machete, mom. And my new wife (another one of the cousins).

Eating grapes with Eddie

My host mom using Chuguriyuyu to help treat my many, many mosquito bites

View from the hillside we were clearing

Clearing a field for a new finca (farm)

Bird nests above us with birds that made the coolest sounds

A young bird fell out of a nest but apparently couldn't fly, since it didn't really try to escape or defend itself against us.

Random Pictures

These are some photos I had that didn't really fit in to the other posts, but I thought were amusing/cool. Enjoy!

Hung out nearby as I was working at a guayusa nursery one day

Awesome dog one of the peace corps volunteers has, named "Supay," as in "Soup-eye."

Huge tree that houses a ton of different plant and animal species - it's crazy how much biodiversity there is in such small spaces around here.

Pictures of a couple of of the tree's branches, it was hard to really capture how much was going on within the tree

Patricio, one of the technicos who works with the guayusa farmers, drinking chicha before a community presentation about the process of selling guayusa and an election for a community representative to Runa

Cool looking fruit/plant

Week 2

Some more pictures (rafting ones are down in the last post):

This is how a pineapple grows - there are a bunch of them growing around the one on top; for some reason this blew my mind

Beginning of a jungle hike to inspect guayusa trees in the jungle

This hurts.

What the inside of cacao looks like- the seeds (which become chocolate eventually) are covered in a fruity sap that you eat to clear off

Cacao seeds

LOOK AT THIS THING

Eating dinner in a Kichwa community- it's called 'mitos' - chicken or fish (chicken here) cooked in the big palm leaves with spices and other stuff- some of the best chicken I've ever had

Rafting!

Here are some pictures from my rafting trip this past weekend, it was a ton of fun. Got really burned but it was definitely worth it!

Bridge jumping...hi mom and dad

It's always higher than I thnk

A cool grotto that we stopped in to see

Your average amazonian spider

View from the grotto (I think that's the right name for it..)

Ecstatic.

Relaxing end to the trip.

Week 1 Pictures

Here are some pictures from the first week's update, as well as a few extra, for those of you who didn't get a chance to see them or didn't get the pictures in email.

The "vivero" (guayusa nursery) before work on it started

Building the vivero

The mostly-finished vivero. This is pretty small compared to other ones that Runa works with, but it still takes a ton of work to build

Cass and Anna, two of Runa's international (British and American, respectively) employees who work down here in Ecuador, Me, and an at-times-unfriendly parrot during our morning guayusa ceremony

A car bridge leading to a community outside of Tena

Aww

Archidona, near where the Runa office is located

Yuca, a staple food in the diet here that can be compared to potatoes, pretty mealy and filling

Mountains pretty much surround everywhere I live