Feb 27th 2009 - My image of travelling

It’s Sara’s birthday but I missed her wake up birthday song as I was so tired I just crashed back to sleep. I did get to sing one at breakfast but as I love the Dane’s voices so I’m happy every time its another birthday! Breakfast consisted of a lot of talking over the shenanigans, with embarrassment and laughter filling the air.

Chloe and I played table tennis and pool but tubing. Tubing was immense! At times it was nice and relaxing, just floating down the stream, whilst at others it was exciting through the rough rapids, hard work when you needed to correct my position and a really beautiful way to travel the river. The wildlife and trees on the banks were stunning and we also saw birds of prey flying above which is cool. The best may have been right at the start when someone pointed out a Pelican tree – well a tree full of Pelicans – and it was a truly wonderful sight as I spun in my rubber ring.

The afternoon was a bit of a mixed bag before a beautiful ending. I needed some alone time so had a therapeutic game of pool by myself before joining some of the others for volleyball. Josefine, Sara, Soren, Katja, Christine, the Louise’s and I headed into town for some yoghurt and juice. The town is how I would have imagined a cloud rainforest town before the trip. Shops lined the street but they could have easily been garages instead. Palm trees ran through the centre of the road. There were fruit and meat stalls randomly on the sidewalks. Bikers glided down the roads, looking like they could be venturing anywhere.

The walk home was magic and is the blip for today. The image is one I will always try to hold in my mind as one of my main memories of travelling in Ecuador. There was only me, Josefine and the Louise’s. The Sun was setting between dark clouds in the sky, causing it to be alight with oranges of many kinds of light, deep, dark, powerful and soft varieties. The image in the blip, with Josefine and Louise Sk walking into the forest and the biker heading somewhere, anywhere or even nowhere, always makes me think of travelling. The Moon was out and we even saw our first star of the trip (yup, it took that long!) and at one point we were surrounded by loads of fireflies, so many in fact that at one point they looked like stars against the dark trees in the background. It was magical.

It is so annoying to be leaving here. That is written whilst sweating by doing nothing more than just sitting down whilst writing this journal. That’s how great it is. It is a truly beautiful place, the hostel is incredible, the staff are always smiling and helpful (and they know I like my food so they sort me out – like today when I was given seconds of the breaded shrimp) and the aura of the whole place has just felt right. Like it’s a second home.

I guess though that looking back, that’s how most of Ecuador felt. Like a second home.