The past two days have been probably the two best days of my entire life. Yesterday, we left Quito and came to the Iyarina Lodge in the Amazon Rainforest. On the drive from Quito to the lodge, we stopped in a cloud forest; a part of the rainforest that’s at such a high altitude that it is actually within the clouds. We hiked around a trail there, and saw incredible things. At first, the path was totally blocked by a fallen tree, but instead of just giving up and turning around we climbed over it, and good thing we did! We saw butterflies with transparent wings, incredible plants, and majestic looking trees. After all of that, there was a tiny empanada stand right outside of the entrance to the forest. We all got cheese filled empanadas for $0.50 each! Finally, as we were eating our empanadas on the side of the highway, we waved to all of the trucks and cars that passed by, and most of them smiled and waved back, it was an awesome experience.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier from the cloud forest, the next day got even crazier! Today we went on what we thought would be a hike along a stream, with one section of about 4 foot tall water and then a waterfall to swim in at the end. Boy were we wrong! The stream flooded and it actually ended up being a hike through a river that was roughly 3-4 feet deep at a base level, and at times far deeper. On top of that, the current was strong. It felt almost impossible to make it through the tough current in the slippery, rocky, unseeable river floor. When we weren’t fighting the river currents, we were slipping around while traversing the rocky banks. Despite these extremely tough situations, it was easily the most memorable two hours of my entire life. I had a blast, it made me feel this incredible sense of accomplishment and pure joy just knowing I was able to perform these physical tasks, and see all of my classmates doing it, too was just really awesome. Our tour guide was named Jefferson, spoke no English, and led the way with a rusty machete. On our way back to the road where our bus was waiting, he literally cut his own path with the machete through the incredible rainforest. I said it multiple times, but it seriously felt like we were in A Bug’s Life with how unbelievably tall the vegetation was. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of this stuff because we couldn’t bring anything electronic due to the whole swimming in the river part, but trust me, these leaves were larger than life.

I can’t even begin to imagine what insanity and adventures the next two days hold (where we’ll be staying in a lodge on an island with an Amazonian tribe without electricity for about 48 hours!)