Up in the mountains

With just a week under my belt, already I can feel a difference in my ability to communicate in spanish. Whereas in the beginning conversations were more or less: "Que tal?" "Nada mucho - como estas?" "Estoy bien, y tu?", now I´m getting into much crazier business - like last night at the dinner table when my host mother was talking about liposuction, plastic surgery and boob jobs in the Americas.

Over the weekend I took a few buses to a small town, then backpacked at altitude through the Andes. We were a small group - half Ecuadorians, half students... with an Indigenous guide kwho was about the sweetest, most well-oiled machine on Earth. The dude literally made stepping stones out of the Earth, and then at another point launched around rocks the size of my torso.

The first day we climbed 1000 meters in elevation. My mind was a little week at that point... and it was at about 4200 m above sea level (mutiply by 3 to get that in feet... then laugh at Denver for thinking it´s high up on a mountain somewhere) that I realized I forgot a bag of Haribo gummy bears next to my bed back in the states. It was pretty traumatizing, but eventually I got over it.

Anyway - tomorrow I´m off to the coast, to a city in the northwest called Esmeraldas. I´ve heard the hospital is crazy and the city dangerous. It makes me feel a little nervous, and I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it... but it will be a good experience. A challenge, of course, but I´ll try to keep my wits about me.

Welp, that´s about all I got. Continued best wishes rocking out to whatever you all up to.

Benjamin John Fullerton Huntley

ps. Yesterday I found a French bakery in the heart of Quito... boo yeah!