We awoke to a thunderstorm today. Usually, I would soak in the thunder and lay in this lovely lodge with screen walls, but…we had an early morning and a 6 hour canoe ride ahead of us today. Yikes. Everyone was frantically finding trash bags to wrap around our singular backpacks of luggage and changing into…

Today, after breakfast, we were given a close-up demonstration of a man from the lodge making chocolate from the cocoa bean. He had to have burnt all of the feeling off of his hands because he would just pick up those burning seeds and crack them! We would all gasp as he basically stuck his…

Waking up in this beautiful lodge was a wonderful start to my day. The walls in my room are all screen, so I could hear all of the wildlife awakening to the sun. I was still freaked out by the concept of a jaguar jumping out at me or a bullet ant crawling up my…

Our day started off early with a daunting seven-hour bus ride to the Iyarina lodge, and a very stressful hour trying to get pre-sale tickets to the Lorde concert on spotty Ecuadorian wifi…spoiler alert…we got kicked off and couldn’t buy them. Shout out to Joshua Ezer for snagging my tickets on the New Jersey wifi!!!…