A Months Journey shared with You!
"Take only pictures, leave only footprints"
As my blog is mainly about travel there is no better experience I can share with you than my trip to Ecuador and the famous Galapagos Islands. Even though I did this two years ago back in 2011 it still feels very recent, it was that memorable. Therefore, this post may be very long as a month is a long time, filled with very exciting things to include. I will not be writing this all from memory, I did keep a diary with me at the time to make sure I didn't forget anything!
For those of you who don't know, Ecuador is situated in South America surrounded by Peru and Colombia. Its capital is Quito and is of Spanish speaking therefore learning Spanish was essential. Or taking a English to Spanish dictionary! Before all of this was even possible to do an astonishing £5000 pounds was to be saved to pay for all the expenses such as all necessary injections and medication, (there were a LOT of these) also equipment and the trip itself! In order to do this I got myself a part time job as a waitress and had two years to save up, so every little bit of money I earn't was put away and not spent, this was a very hard and challenging task! I was not the only one on this trip, an organisation called 'World Challenge' came into my secondary school and told the students of this amazing opportunity, so I jumped at the chance to go and so did 8 other students a teacher and a leader from the 'World Challenge' organisation itself.
The night before
Sunday 17th July 2011
Everyone arrived at school and had their kit thoroughly checked, which seemed to take hours and hours! After, our parents came to say goodbye and listen to our talks which we had prepared about Ecuador and The Galapagos islands. Saying goodbye was quite emotional but at the same time not sad because I was just so excited to actually be travelling to Ecuador the next day, after the huge amount of money saving, injections and general preparation all completed all was left to do was to sleep and get up early to catch our plane! Sleeping in the gym at school was really strange and quite exciting, we pulled down this gigantic blue crash mat and slept on that all 8 of us huddled up. The sleep was not as comfortable as it looked and everyone was far too excited to actually get any real sleep.
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| Kit Check! |
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| 'Photo time, everyone pretend you're asleep' |
Travelling to Quito! -18th July 2011
This was a nightmare of a journey for me because I threw up the entire way! NEVER EVER take you're malaria tablets on an empty stomach...this causes extreme illness and embarrassment. Anyways, we left school at roughly 5am to catch a plane to Miami (this was the first flight) which took 9 hours... this was the longest flight I had ever been on and to be throwing up every 10 minutes was the worst thing. It was so uncontrollable that I even threw up on one of my team mates just before boarding the plane, the looks from others trying to board was something else!
Finally we reached Miami, after 9 hours on one plane we had to run to the next, thankfully this flight was much shorter and it only took 3 and a half hours to reach the capital of Ecuador ...Quito!!
From Quito airport to our hostel for the next few days 'Posada del Maple' even though this was a much shorter journey we had all been awake for 24 hours and as you can imagine were all extremely tired and as Ecuador is 6 hours behind English time we were all jet lagged.
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| Jules outside Posada Del Maple |
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| Breakfast time |
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| The outside patio |
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| Inside Posada Del Maple |
Day 3 and 4 - Roles within the team!
So, we had finally reached Quito all in one piece and over the next couple of days the main activities were sorting roles within the group, these included:
- Team Leader
- Deputy Leader
- First Aider
- Transport
- Accommodation
- Courter master
- Motivator
- Health & Safety
- 2 Accountants
- 2 Cooks
We would all get a turn at these roles over the weeks to come, I was put in charge of arranging accommodation for the next couple of nights which is easier said than done considering we had to speak over the phone in spanish and understand what they were saying back. As myself and Grace had studied GCSE spanish we had an advantage over the others but were still just as useless. Even though it was extremely hard we managed to secure rooms with our budget.
Talking of a budget, during the day a few of us went to the supermarket to buy food for the next couple of days and this whole budgeting thing did not go to plan! The accountants were not too happy that we had accidently spent $28.00 on cheese! The rest of the team found it hilarious. To rock the boat more some of the team wrote '$28.00 on cheese' on a piece of paper and stuck it to the hostel notice board, the accountants really were not happy! Anyways we finished the evening by going to a restaurant which one of the girls booked by speaking in German over the phone, she knew no Spanish.
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| Team mate Ellie put the cheese sign up! |
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| Dinner, booked in German by Hannah! |
Acclimatisation day trek: Llalo Peak
20th July 2011
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| The TOP of Ilalo peak!! |
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| Much needed refreshments! |
Cloud forest phase: Puerto Quito- 21st-23rd July 2011
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| Lizzie and Me on our way to Cocoa Lodge! |
This part of the trip was quite possibly my favourite, we arrived at 'Cocoa Lodge' a fruit farm called Hostel 'Frutas Tropicales' which is situated in the jungle so the scenery was amazing. Their was a flowing river where we washed our clothes and ourselves in, tall colourful plants and trees and a very welcoming active family. The family was made up of 3 small children, 3 dogs, 1 cat with a limp and various other adults. The team loved the smallest dog whose name was 'jarmou' pronounced 'har-moo'. That night we slept in tents underneath tall bamboo trees next to the flowing river, we even had our own small hut with benches and a bar!
However, when setting up our tents for the evening my team mate Ellie sliced her finger open with a pen knife, so was sent to hospital and had to have 3 stitches- there was blood everywhere!!
After Ellie came back from hospital we went down to the river to swim. The rocks were slippery but the water was refreshing and cooling as jungle air is very humid so very sticky!
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| The view from our tents! |
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| myself raking the leaves before pitching the tent |
The fruit farm was simply incredible, their were fruits I had never heard or seen before. The first fruit we tasted was the coco bean which makes chocolate, it has a hard and colourful shape and on the inside their are white cubes which personally I didn't like the taste of- it was very sour! Their were so many fruits we got shown that I simply cannot list and describe them all to you but they were all different, different in texture, taste, colour, their were even ones that get turned into medicine! Others that were unusual such as the snake skinned fruit. We also got to see a variety of unusual trees as well such as a tree that gets used for the oil it produces in the fruit it grows- however, it takes 50 years for the fruit to grow and the tree gets very tall!
A tree that makes rubber? Yes, this particular tree grows on the inka cemetery, inka's were a group of people who used to go around killing other people until the Spanish killed them! An interesting point about inka's is that when they are buried they are buried with their expensive items such as jewels, money, clothes and so on.
The rest of the three hour tour was dedicated to eating fruit that Gabrielle our tour guide was collecting for us. They also showed us how they make some of their clothes and roofs out of strong leaves and sticks from the jungle.
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| just a huge ants nest we came across on our travels |
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one of the many interesting plants
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Gabrielle cutting open the coco bean
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inside the coco bean!
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| Bananas in progress! |
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| Bananas fully grown |
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| Snake Skin fruit |
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| A very Spiky tree that Snake Skin fruit grows on |
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| A tree that makes rubber, grows on inka land |
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| A tree that produces oil! |
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| Sugar Cane..mmm yummy! |
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| Coca leaf |
COCA leaf
This leaf comes from the Coca plant and is used to make Coca tea, having had a bite of this leaf it tasted bitter relatively similar to green tea. The interesting part- the leaves of the coca plant contain alkaloids which when extracted are the source for cocaine. However, don't panic the amount of alkaloid in raw leaves are small. Around 5 cups of Coca tea would be the same amount as a line of cocaine, it is illegal in the United States unless it is decocanised.
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| Leaves used to make roofs |
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| That makes a great shelter from the rain Steve! |
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| For roof tops and hats |
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| Gabrielle collecting the fruit! |
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| collected, then peeled |
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| Then Eaten! |
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| There was a lot of climbing and collecting! |
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| Up close and delicious! |
Evening cooking course- How to make chocolate!
I, like most girls are a great lover of chocolate so I was extremely excited to do this. We all got a lesson in how to make 100% chocolate from the Coco beans we had collected earlier from our tour of the fruit farm. (Scroll up to see images of the Coco beans)
First off, Gabrielle heated the Coco beans in a pan.
2nd- We cracked the beans to remove the shell.
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| placing all the unshelled beans on a separate plate |
3rd- Now for the grinding, this was extremely hard to do. We all had a go at twisting and turning the lever on this device which grinds the beans and produces a powder.
4th step- The powder was very bitter so to make it taste like chocolate Gabrielle added milk and cooked it to make it melt.
Voila- melted chocolate enjoyed with more fruit :)
I personally didn't like the taste of the chocolate but most people did and it was a great experience learning where it comes from and how its made.
After a very exciting day walking around the fruit farm and producing our own chocolate we moved from tent to hut later that night. The wood smelt funny and the air was thick and humid but it was softer than sleeping on the floor in the tents. As its rainy season we had to sleep with our mosquito nets as their are so many! Insect repellant was always needed just to be on the safe side.
End of part 1.
Love Charlotte xx
