10 days in

As of a few days ago it has been ten days in Ecuador. We begin our field season this week after a week spent in prep. Sorry for the grammatical errors in the last post didn't have a lot of time to complete it. So what's new from the last week. First, yesterday we visited Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is famous for it's older citizens and is supposed to be the site of some of the oldest people in the world. There is supposed to be something in the water - the fountain of youth if you will. So we journeyed to the fountain of youth and guess what we found - a utopic scene of crashing waterfalls and gold plated everything? Well... Not quite. More like a small moss covered cave with an empty tire and two by fours strewn all over the place. So not the utopic scene but I still touched the water so will now live a longer and healthier life. Hippies, expatriots, and bohemians have now invaded the town and it is now more touristy than ever. What else is new. If you know me well, you would know that I could live off of fruit and nothing else. One of the best parts of being here is all of the amazing fruit and food. Passionfruit, tree tomatoes, guava, and juices of all kinds are ever-present and it's great! Also the horchata here is made of fruit and is locally specific to loja. It's much different and much better than the Mexican version of horchata made of rice milk stuff. That's all for now but much to come soon.