Maquipucuna

If you haven't heard of Maquipucuna, it's no surprise (although I'm guessing some of the other places sounded like mysteries too). When I asked other Ecuadorians before I went, they had no idea what I was talking about, although it’s only about 2 1/2 hours outside of Quito. It's a well hid secret because it's a natural reserve. This cloud forest has about 1700 different types of plants, 365 types of bird, 220 types of butterflies, and a ton of other animals. Despite this, I saw some plants and maybe 3 birds, but nothing to the extent of those numbers. In general, Ecuador has a ton of nature all condensed into a small area, probably because of its location near the equator and its moderate climate.

We stayed in a "building" house/structure/cabin completely open and pretty big, made out of bamboo or some type of light colored wood. It kind of reminded me of the huts in Survivor, except a lot bigger and a lot nicer, hopefully the pictures describe it better. We went on another hike to see some of the nature, and really just hung out for the rest of the time. You could hear the waterfall from the patio and while lying in bed. The best part was probably the chocolate massage (cheap too), and the coffee that for once wasn't instant Nescafe - which for some reason is their idea of a caffeine fix - I can only take it mixed with instant hot chocolate. The coffee here though was fresh ground, grown on some part of the reserve. Very outdoorsy.

Well, this week marks the end of my studies in Ecuador. I'm heading to the beach on Thursday after my final. I'm excited to relax this weeked, a change from my usual weekends in the "jungles". I'm especially excited to have a real taste of summer. I'll be refreshed for the week coming up -- cooking all different types of hispanic food from Perú, Argentina, México, Spain and then BREAD - which I am most excited for. The first week we cooked, we could see the bakers in the other kitchen, and it was so hard to be around the smell of fresh bread all day and not have any. I hope I'll learn the "right" technique to baking bread, because aparently not everyone does it well. That's one thing I'm going to miss here - there is a bakery on every corner and it's all really cheap, but fresh (I'm talking as low as 10 cents, maybe 75 for something really special). But until then...