Adios Marco, Adelante!

Hello friends & family! We know it's been awhile since our last post but don't worry, we're still alive & well!! :)

We've officially completed our first month of farming as we left Quindi Pakcha (Marco's farm) on January 23rd. We can't believe how quickly the month went! It was such a wonderful experience that we will carry with us as we move forward on this journey.

One of the main projects we wrapped our time up with was building a new kitchen for Marco's family! Even after a month of observing Marco in action we were still amazed at how handy he is & how much he can do with so few tools. The entire kitchen was built from wood, using tree stumps as the base to hold up the floor & then wood panels for the floor, walls, window panes, door & steps. It felt great to be a part of creating that new part of the home for the family, and we finished it just in time to have a big family dinner in there on our last night :) We've definitely grown an entirely new appreciation for how hard it is to farm & also how long it takes to build things. We'll drive by farms now & comment on what a nice planting job they did or how straight their rows are haha It's nice too because we're able to recognize more plants & fruits both in mercados & out in nature. We were able to actually watch one of the fields we weeded & tilled start growing the vegetables we had planted! :)

During our last couple weeks on the farm our lovely dog Tony decided to bring us some presents! Anyone ever eaten armadillo before? hahah I guess there are quite a few out roaming around the farm at night & the dogs sometimes catch them & bring them back to the house. Jackie, Maria (Marco's wife) & I were talking in the kitchen of our cabana when we heard a thump & went outside to see what it was, finding Tony's tail wagging with excitement as he placed the dead armadillo on the porch for us to see. Maria didn't hesitate to just pick it up & bring it into the kitchen (we've also seen her kill cockroaches with her bare hands!) We didn't just try armadillo & eat it once, we had armadillo for the next three days! hahah armadillo soup, fried armadillo, boiled armadillo. You name it, we had it. Jackie & I ate the tail one time! It wasn't nearly as hard to eat as Huanta, but we had our fair share of it & by the end we were happy it was gone. Armadillo has a pretty strong scent, as it left a distinct smell in the kitchen for a few days after haha

I was lucky to spend my 23rd birthday on the farm! Our last day was suppose to be on the 22nd, but I asked Marco if we could stay an extra day so I could celebrate there with the family. He warmly welcomed it & we all had a really nice last night celebrating both my birthday & the closing of our time there. We felt like it was such a nice way to close out that chapter, feeling like we were at a place where we genuinely felt comfortable at their house & felt like we had really built some beautiful relationships with the family. It felt like a family BBQ we would have back in the States, with the warm sun out, the kids running around playing outside, people helping out in the kitchen, everyone just laughing & enjoying themselves. We ate the freshest chicken we'll probably ever eat, as we witnessed Marco grab a chicken from their backyard, kill it, pluck it & cook it. Since we knew we'd be with the family on our last night, the night before my birthday we went into Puyo for some birthday pizza :) Afterwards we grabbed some wine & went back to the cabana for a bonfire where Jack & Kev surprised me with birthday s'mores! They're the best :)

After a wonderful month with Marco & his family, we headed East to Banos, Ecuador, a city known for extreme outdoor sports...they're not kidding when they say extreme. Within three days we managed to enjoy their hot thermal baths, go mountain biking, go river rafting, bungee jump off a bridge & go canyoning down waterfalls! We had so much fun! We still can't believe we went bungee jumping. Only here, I suppose it's not totally fair to call it "bungee" since the rope we used wasn't a bungee rope... it was just a regular rope!! I know, we're crazy. But we watched a lot of people do it before us so that we could be sure it was still safe & so that we could see how best to jump. After watching two girls get up there, begin crying, and get pushed off the platform making for a flailing & ungraceful jump, we decided the only way we could do it is if we were committed to flying. Since it wasn't a bungee rope you get stopped with one swift tug, but we realized we could make that tug a lot more graceful if we jumped out & worked with the rope rather than falling straight down & working against it. So, flew we did :) Jackie went first, Kevin followed & then I went. We all did a really good job of not thinking about it and just doing it. Once you're up there with your feet half off the ledge of the jump platform & the guy behind you begins counting you down & all you see below you is this green canyon with a rushing river I think we all inevitably said in our head "Holllyyy shiiiiitttt!!!" but there really wasn't much more time to do anything other than move without thinking & pick up our feet to jump. Jackie & I did some quick, calm breathing before we got up there, what we called "channeling inner bird" :) It was incredible & we are so happy we did it.

Before bungee jumping, we got to go river rafting down el Rio Pastaza :) While we were on the farm we became friends with another volunteer there, Jaime, & we all went to Banos together afterwards. It was his birthday on Wednesday so we all went river rafting for that :) It was a lot of fun, especially when Jackie & I got to be "captains" & sit up front haha No one fell out of our raft, but a few people in other rafts did. Our instructor was really funny & partly insane, yelling at us to keep padeling even when we were in the middle of getting swallowed by the rapids & couldn't see anything haha The boys didn't go mountain biking or canyoning but Jackie & I did! We mountain biked down past a handful of waterfalls & ended at a huge one called Pailon de Diablo where we could hike up to the top of it & stand underneath it. So pretty! We also went canyoning which was awesome but hard!! We had expected it to be a little more smooth, thinking it was more of a glide down the rope, but it's not. haha It was strenuous & actually kind of scary at some points, but worth it. We got to go to some amazing canyons we would have not been able to see otherwise &, aside from slipping & body slamming the rocks a few times, we got to belay down beautiful watetrfalls! The other people in the group laughed at us when we made a face of being scared, saying we were crazy to be scared of this but okay with jumping off a bridge haha

Banos was a fun, little town in itself, beautifully located in a tranquil valley of the Andes. There were a surprising amount of people from Argentina, a few who we became friends with & may stay with when we make it that far South :) We found a cafe close to our hostel that had an amazing coffee called Seven Spices. We went there multiple times haha The market had fresh fruit & vegetables that we went & bought everyday. We've done an awesome job of cooking dinner, which has turned out to not only be healthier but way cheaper. You can buy 3 mangos for a dollar here! Bananas & tomatoes are 10 cents, apples are 25, and the most expensive fruit we've bought have been oranges for 50 cents because they're grown down in Chile. We bargain for everything, from food to clothes to bus fares, & we manage to get the prices dropped most of the time. We've gotten to the point where we can call out a few bus drivers who have tried to gip us of our money! haha We even negotiated bungee jumping! It was originally $20 per person (which is insanely cheap already!) but we got it to $15 since we all jumped hahah

We just spent a nice few days in Cuenca, Ecuador relaxing & rejuvinating. We're heading back up North now to get to our farm for the month of February! (www.rhiannon-community.org) We're really excited for this farm & think it will be a great time.

Thanks for staying with us friends. We hope you're all well!

Lots of love,

A & J