This Wednesday was a lot more chill after a hectic couple of days. We had a calm 8 AM breakfast of eggs, yuca, fresh fruit, and orange juice. Very yummy per usual. Today we worked on our pottery a little more since it had dried out completely. I took a small stone and rubbed the…

Sunday began a long journey to the Waorani territory and where we’d be staying. We met promptly at 6 AM bright and early to drop our backpacks off that held everything we’d need for the next couple days.  I loaded up on eggs and fruit before we took a 2ish hour bus ride to a…

Did you get the reference in my title? It’s okay if you didn’t. Anyways, Saturday’s breakfast was delicious, and I could tell we had an interesting day ahead of us when they just kept on bringing more and more French toast. Which of course was paired with a tasty syrup, fresh fruit, and juice. This…

This was the day we said goodbye to the hotel dogs in Otavalo and we set off on our jam packed schedule bright and early. Our first stop was located at zero degrees latitude, right on the equator! Like, we literally stood right on the line, it was epic. There were also super big agave…

I never thought I’d be able to get as much done as we did on day four of this trip. Our first stop after breakfast was Cotacachi where we boarded a boat and saw a small portion of the vast lake and some of the diverse wildlife. It was interesting afterwards to see a diagram…

Day 2 was one of the days I’d been looking forward to most, chocolate! After a breakfast of fresh fruits and eggs, we headed to Yumbos Chocolate for our first tasting of the day. The different flavors were so rich and my favorite part was the hot chocolate and brownie they gave which tasted heavenly…

Today was our first full day in Ecuador and the city of Quito was full of experiences. Our travel day on Saturday was long and pretty sleepless (but a layover in Miami was kind of best case scenario), but this definitely made up for it! We started off by walking to the Cathédrale de San…

Hi! My name is Malini Kondisetty, and this May I will be traveling to Ecuador for the Plus3 program at Pitt. I am a freshman business major here at Pitt from North Wales, Pennsylvania. I am so excited for this adventure and to learn all about the culture, chocolate, and flowers of Ecuador! At Pitt,…