Day twelve started off with a very odd dream I had. I usually don’t remember my dreams, but I did vividly remember this one. To make it a long story short my alarm never went off so I slept in, and everyone left without me. It even woke me up and I made sure my alarm was set because I was so paranoid. After that I went back to bed and was woken up a few hours later by Malini waking up. When I went to check the time, it was thirty minutes past the time I set my alarm. My alarm looked like it was going off but there was no sound! It was ten minutes before we had to leave for breakfast, so I rushed around trying to get ready to make it on time. We made it to breakfast only a couple minutes late, but they hadn’t started serving it yet, so I’d call it a win. Breakfast was eggs but this time they had peppers in them. There were also the usual juice, fruit, and buns.
Our plan for the day was to visit a newer chocolate place and a close town by canoe, but the water in the river was too high so we had to take a minibus and van which took much longer. On our way there the van blew a tire which was very very unfortunate, but we all made it to our destination safely. The chocolate place we visited was called Waytu and they started off by showing us the beginning processes of making chocolate. It was very unfortunate that it was pouring rain at the time. It was really unique because the entire trip we had seen the process after the means had already been dried but they showed us the process of harvesting, fermenting, and drying. They also let us harvest our own pods which I snacked on while they were walking us through it. I have LOVED how much fresh cacao I have been getting here. It’s so sweet but almost sour and I honestly wish I could just snack on them all the time. When we were done seeing the process of making the chocolate we got to taste test some at the end. They didn’t have many flavors just ones that were like 100% cacao, 85%, 70% with milk and so on and so forth. However, they did have a lemongrass bar and a citrus vanilla one they were in the process of releasing. They also had two very cute dogs roaming around and one of them just wouldn’t stop wagging its tail.
When we were done, we were supposed to go into a small town nearby for lunch and shopping, but the rain had flooded it. It was also the same town that was supposed to have monkeys all over, so I was pretty bummed about not being able to go, but it did give us more time to work on our video project. We had some technical difficulties, so we actually had to restart our video and redo it. It took us a few hours so by the time we were done with it, it was time to vote on them. The videos were a competition so the people working at the lodge and another college group staying there got to vote on which one was their favorite. Ultimately Leah and Nora won but honestly it was well deserved. Their video was so good. They won by an overwhelming amount but still me and Malini got second place. I think it was our song choice and Spanish subtitles that helped us. After that it was dinner time and we had rice with chicken, salad, and pineapple.
After dinner I went to check to see if our pottery was done and it was. However, the outcome was not good. A couple pots made it perfectly but the majority of them were unfortunately broken, cracked, or burnt. My bowl was still in one piece but there were massive chunks missing out of the side and my cup made it but had some paint defects. At first, I wasn’t going to keep my bowl and was just going to throw it away but then I had the idea to smash it into smaller pieces and make some sort of mosaic piece with it. The women at the lodge who helped us make the bowls were selling some of their own work so to compensate for my loss I obviously had to purchase something from each of them. I got a beautiful bowl with a frog in the bottom for the frog we saw in our room the first day at the lodge. Then I got a jaguar face wall piece from the other woman.
After dinner we had our goodbye ceremony. They had a band come and we danced for a few hours. At one point I was tired and sat down, but the little girl, Camilla, came up to me and grabbed my hands to go dance. I couldn’t say no so I danced with her for a little while until the party was over. When the band left everyone decided to move to the pool. I decided to pack for about twenty minutes and then go swim. It was a little cold, so I didn’t swim for too long but a few of us joined people dancing to warm up. Eventually I got tired and went back to the room to pack a little bit more and shower before our last sleep at Iyarina.