La Hesperia

The trip to the dairy farm was very enjoyable. It started with taking a taxi to the terminal terrestre (a really big bus station) where I met up with the rest of the group. From there we took a 2 hour bus ride to the dairy farm through the mountains. The bus let us off at the bottom of the road that we had to take up to the dairy farm. It was a pretty steep rock road, only 4 wheel drives could make it up. A jeep was supposed to come down and take our stuff up to the farm for us... but it didn't. So we had to walk. We had been told to pack light, and I had, but I wasn't expecting the trek we had in front of us. It was all pretty much steep uphill, which wouldn't have been too bad if it wasn't for the stuff we were carrying. This wasn't just a hill, it was a mountain! You would have to walk it to realize what it was like. It took probably about 45 minutes to get up, which we finally did, and then the jeep drove up just as we got to the top. Grr. We picked our rooms, the house we were staying at had about 6 rooms each with 4-6 beds in each. There was an upstairs and downstairs, with a fire place. It was really nice. I roomed with Renee, Winston, and Stephanie in a downstairs room, which turned out to be a really good idea because when we built a fire that night turns out the chimney was blocked. So all the smoke went upstairs. We rested, unpacked, and had lunch.
The meals there were really good. For the first lunch we had salad with home-made vinaigrette, cheesy potatoes, fruit juice, and bread. For the other meals we had milk (from the farm), plantain, fresh juice, spaghetti, eggs and bacon, and nice bread.
We had a lesson on plant species after an hour siesta and then played uno, sat by the fire and then went to bed at about 9. The next morning some people got up at 7:30 to go milk cows, but I decided to sleep. We had breakfast at 8:30 and then went on a 5 hour hike through the cloud forest.
All along the way, we stopped and our teacher (Kelly is his last name) told us plant family names and pointed out interesting things about each, like one family (Piperaceae) is related to black pepper and if you broke the inflorescence of it under your nose, it smelled slightly peppery. We saw lots of huge leaved plants, climbing plants, wild begonias, and a toucan! It wasn't all brightly colored- just green, but it was still really neat. There were also lots of butterflies, spiders, and bugs in general. We ate lunch in a clearing about halfway through the hike.
The next part of the hike was through a stream, well pretty much in the stream for a good 10 minutes or more. He told us to bring water shoes, but pretty much everyone didn't really listen, and either brought flip-flops or no water shoes at all. A bit of a problem, since their shoes didn't really dry out the next day. I felt like I was in the movies of Rambo or Indiana Jones. Most everyone took a shower when we got back, but the showers were cold and by the time it was my turn the day had cooled off so I decided that I liked being one with the rain forest. Showers aren't really that necessary anyway.
That evening we set up bat nets, but caught one bird twice, and only one bat. The bat was pretty big and very noisy. We also played about a 2 hour game of uno. Then was fire place sitting time, then bed. I felt like some bug was biting me as I was falling asleep, but I didn't think much of it. I woke up in the morning with about 30 bug bites all over my stomach. Not cool. They still itch.
I took a cold shower the next day to see if that would help the itching, it did for a bit. We walked back down the hill at about 1:30 and took a bus back to Quito. I didn't want to leave the farm, but in about a week and a half we go to the beach!