When we got back to the house, we started making dinner. Okay, a lot of the others started making dinner, but I figured there could be a problem of too many cooks in the kitchen, literally, and so Megan, Reluca, Peter, and I checked out the sunflower plantation. The plantation was pretty big, and it turned out that all the sunflowers were shipped to Russia to be sold. Talk about random. But I guess sunflowers are pretty popular there.

Mat, Jenn, and Marisco making homemade tortillas...yum

When it started getting too dark to see much else, we headed back to the house, where we joined in a game of Describe and Yell. Well, I don’t really know the name of the game, but basically you divide up into partners and have to describe a person that is written on a piece of paper you draw to your partner in a set amount of time. In Spanish. And then your partner guesses who the person is.

After lots of confusion and guessing, dinner was ready and we ate an absolute delicious meal of homemade tortillas, salsa, meat, lentils, and cheese. As good as my tuna fish sandwich was the night before, I have to say this was ten times better.

After dinner we headed outside where it had finally stopped raining and built a bonfire and attempted to play Telephone in Spanish. Yeah. You can probably guess how screwed up our sentences were by the end of the game considering well over half of us were not native Spanish speakers.

We stayed up enjoying the campfire, and when we got tired headed to our tents. This time we used Matt’s rain fly in addition to our own rain hat, yet somehow water still got in! But it was okay, because the night wasn’t too cold and we all slept pretty well.

So the next morning we woke up to the sun baking on our tent and ate a quick(ish) breakfast. Then we loaded all our stuff into some of Diego’s friends’ cars and we caught a bus to the town of Quinche. From there we piled into some rented jeeps (Raluca, Peter, and I got the back/trunk of one) and we drove up the mountain.

It was a gorgeous ride, though there were some nerve-wracking points when we weren’t sure the back hatch was closed all the way and held onto each other for dear life. Still, we made it to our drop-off place in one piece. Well, I guess there were fourteen pieces, since we’re all separate people. But you get my point.

A shot from the back of our Jeep of the two Jeeps that followed us...this was one of the flatter parts of the road

The good thing about the fog was that we couldn’t see how far we had left to go, so I just focused on making it to the next bend in the road. It was a pretty tough hike for me, but the scenery (well, what I could see of it) was gorgeous. Once again, I felt like I was in Scotland or something instead of Ecuador, because it was quite chilly with lots of fog and pastures. I guess I’ll have to check my passport to make sure I really am in Ecuador and not Ireland or Scotland.

Ramiro moving the fence for us to pass through

Pedro, Jenn, Stacey, and Megan hiking up the mountain!

So we walk and walk and hike and hike. Every once in awhile, we would come to a fence, and Ramiro would move the barb wired gate so we could get through. At one point we walked right through a ton of cows, and I got a bit nervous because Ramiro was wearing bright red. Or are cows colorblind? Well, either way, I didn’t think that they would be very happy with us invading their territory. Still, we made it through without any incident!

Hoping these cows are friendly