A Better Account of Ecuador

One of the 3 school buildings. I think this is the biggest.

So the first week was mostly volunteer work which involved teaching some little kids English, learning Spanish from little kids, digging a sewerage pit thingy so the little kids can have proper toilets at school, painting a school and trying to cover said sewerage pit because it absolutely pissed down rain. So in 30-40*C heat I dug through rocks and solid clay for 3 days.

They look so innocent

I even spent an entire afternoon painting in the shade (that was pretty awesome).

You can't tell but it's 2m deep.

I also tubed down the largest river in the Amazon for 3 hours all up. (2 were travelling to a jungle lodge where we stayed 2 nights). We also went to an Animal rescue shelter (Amazoonia) and watched a witch doctor or shaman as he spit on my sisters head! (Turns out he was sucking in air but it sounded like she got spat on)

Probably the best photo I took the whole time.

We traveled everywhere by motor canoe, it's pretty fantastic, and in the back of a small truck, that was so much fun.

They didn't let us hang off the back but we tried to.

Capuchen monkeys live in the middle of the town, Mishualli. It's pronounced Misa-hua-gee because the local tribe is the Kichwa people and that's how they told us to pronounce it.

Campbell and the Capuchen

I had my face painted by a local, I was El Loco Gato (The Crazy Cat), another girl got traditional female face markings and the third had warriors I think.

Pretty photo of green stuff.

We also got to watch how traditional pottery is made. Mostly it's made using clay from the riverbed and sand also from the rivers. It's polished using a stone and coloured the same way!

Pepito the adorable/evil dog that tried to steal my sunnies.

I trekked through the amazon for 5hours in one day so I felt pretty invincible, after I slept of course, Everybody was pretty tired afterwards.

Really old tree roots full of spiders.

There were 16 people including myself. 15 Aussies and 1 Canadian. The Canadian girl is fearless she climbed the waterfall and got lost at the top.

The kids loved taking photos with cameras

The waterfall is insanely beautiful, as was the butterfly house.

The third butterfly that landed on my back.

Memorable quotes:
It's so good eh (Canadians say this a lot eh.)
How good is it? Sooooo good. (All the time)
Why do they call it a rainforest? (As we were trekking whilst it rained)
We were in the Amazon?! (After the 5 hour trek)
Ah nooooo. (We kinda over-used this)
El Blanco Diablo (Cause we were white lol)

Mmm lunch time and a Cacao fruit!