Highs and Lows

Life always seems to follow a cyclic pattern for me, like a sine wave of excitement for life.  Recently my wavelength has shortened and life seems to be putting me through a little bit more of a tumultuous ride.  (Sorry for the dorky analogy, but it seemed fitting)

As one might expect, life in Ecuador hasn’t been a cake ride.  Moving to an unknown continent with absolutely no knowledge of the language and culture was expected to create a challenge.

My first task once arriving in Quito was obvious: learn Spanish.  On my second day in Quito I found a local school, and scheduled one-on-one instruction for four hours everyday.  While this certainly proved to be essential knowledge and it gave me somewhat of a purpose, it led to a bit of a mundane lifestyle.  Living in an apartment, in a relatively ritzy neighborhood, in a large city, where I didn’t speak the language didn’t quite fit the bill for the unique cultural experience I was seeking, and I found it quite easy to get into a funk.

After five or so weeks I decided I’d had enough of Spanish class.  I needed to find something different.  Somehow, despite this desire to get out and explore, I remained reluctant to leave the comfort of the apartment.  I spent two weeks at home not really accomplishing much.  Searching for volunteer opportunities on the interweb had led me to find many great places, but for an unknown reason I wasn’t finding what I was looking for, maybe it was because most places feel the need to charge what I felt was an excessively large amount to come work for free for them.  This didn’t compute for me.

Fortunately, during those two weeks off, I had made a friend who wanted to go kayaking and would be able to borrow an inflatable kayak for Catherine.  Perfect, the trip was set to go to Tena on Saturday and return Sunday.  The weekend started off with us watching a Marc Anthony, Cheyenne, and Pitbull concert from the roof of our apartment building.  It would be hard to beat that Friday night; right? Maybe; well… probably?   So I reached deep for a maneuver of epic coordination in the middle of the night.  Saturday morning at 4 AM I woke up to pee, afterwards I felt dizzy, and the next thing I know I’m laying on the bed looking up at Catherine.  She had woken up to a thud in the bathroom and found me seizing on the bathroom floor with a hole in my head.  I had fainted in the bathroom, and broke my fall with my eyebrow on a still unknown object.  Pretty scary for her, but she did a great job, and remained calm.  Thank you so much Catherine!  I'm super lucky to have you!

I found Ecuadorian hospital care quite good and reasonably priced.  Despite that, this marked my low point.  Swapping boating for hospital care: no bueno.  (Funny side note: the day after my injury, which involved a concussion, I went over the handle bars on my bike, and broke my fall with my head.  Somehow, I was okay, but you can see the scrapes from my bike helmet in the following picture)

My lovely nurse removing the stitches

In the end the kayaking trip was only pushed back one week.  We went to Tena and had a blast.  Catherine borrowed a ducky and we did the Upper Mishualli and the Lower Jondachi. Really fun and world class rivers.

For some reason two people in a one-man ducky seemed like a good idea.  Upper Mishualli

Check out Catherine's amigo in the background.  Lower Jondachi

Boof! Upper Mishualli

So things really seemed to be looking up from the face-plant incident, and they were about to get better.  My amigo, Dave, decided he'd seen enough of Ecuador, but before he left he wanted to climb Cotopaxi.  It seemed like a good idea to me so we climbed Pichincha on Tuesday and Cotopaxi on Wednesday/Thursday.  It made for a great week.

Training!

Acclimatizing

El Refugio Jose Ribas

Crater and me at sunrise (5897 m / 19,347 ft.)

Dave coming in out of the clouds

Glacier and Antisana

I had reached an amazing high point in my time here in Ecuador, and things are looking up.  My Spanish may be suffering a bit, but I have a lot more time left in South America to practice.  I am also still searching for that purpose that will make my time in Ecuador really something that I can look back on with pride.  I guess things like that just aren't going to come easy.  Until then, I'll it's kayaking season!