Justin McCandless

Today is the Ecuadorian independence day, which I didn't actually know about until yesterday, but apparently it means that I get the day off work. At least I think so, no body really ever told me anything about it, though I do remember on Friday somebody asking me to help with something Tuesday (strangely not Monday). So, I'm staying home.

And since I'm home (and my family is in Macará visiting relatives), I might as well write about what I did yesterday since it was fairly interesting. I went with Fátima from AIESEC and her four other siblings to visit their aunt and uncle's finca. I think the closest word to finca in English is ranch. It's usually a house out in a rural area with some farmland and animals and stuff. Which sounds pretty much like a ranch, but just because of being so different in the Ecuadorian style I feel like using finca instead.

The place was located between Loja and Malacatos, right right on the edge of Podocarpus National Park. So out the back of the finca is just mountains and forest with no other people for a long way, seeing as Podocarpus is huge. I thought that was cool, it reminded me of the massive uninhabited deserts back home in Nevada.

Anyway, we met all met up at a roundabout on the road to Vilcabamba, where the bus passes by. We flagged it down when it came and got on, and paid 70 cents each to ride about 45 minutes out of town. They let us off on the side of the road there, and we started hiking towards the finca. After about a 20 minute hike, including crossing a stream via a really sketchy bridge, we arrived.

I met the family who lived there and then got a tour of the place. First we saw the pigs, which they had a good amount of. There was a litter (correct word for pigs?) of piglets, which was pretty cool to see; they were probably smaller than most cats. Then there were some dog sized young pigs, like 10 or so good sized maybe adultish or teenager pigs, and then 3 of the biggest pigs I've ever seen. I've never been to a pig farm before, but I didn't even realize it was possible for pigs to grow this large. I'm completely guessing, but I'd say they had to be like 300 pounds or more. I don't know how those little piglets could grow that big.

We then went to see the chickens, where there must have been like 100 of them running around. They lived in a fenced in area with a big coop type building in the middle. And a german shepherd protecting them, though he never did anything but bark at us luckily.

Also inside the coop were some cuyes (guinea pigs), which was pretty funny to see on a farm. They lived like 10 per 10'x10' stall. There was also a new litter of them, too bad they would some day end up like the ones in the picture I took in Baños.

There were also a bunch of different kinds of chickens running around freely on the farm, and some ducks. In addition to the german shepherd in the chicken coop, there were also about 5 other dogs on the farm, mostly german shepherd type dogs as well. And roaming the green grass covered mountains around the finca were plenty of cows.

After the tour we went back to the house to play some volleyball. Ecuadorian volleyball (Ecuavolley) is different than it is in the US though, as I think I've talked about before. Basically, the court is significantly bigger, and the net is higher, and it's almost always 3 on 3. This changes the game a lot though, as you pretty much can't spike or block, and the best way to score is either to lob it to a spot where the other team isn't covering, or drill it to the far away back of the court.

So my huge height advantage over everyone else, which would have normally made me destroy against these guys in regular volleyball, was basically insignificant. I could still jump high enough to get a bit of my hand above the net, so I could occasionally make longish semispikes if the ball was placed correctly. This was usually my team's strategy still though, to get me setup as the third touch to semispike. We were playing with a soccer ball by the way, so that made spiking even more difficult and just bumping the ball on the giant court painful.

It was a lot of fun, though, especially since I rarely get to play any sports here in Ecuador. But these Ecuadorians don't know what they're missing, the absolute best part of volleyball is spiking the ball right through someone's block.

We also played a game of soccer, which I am much worse at than volleyball, especially on the small dirt field we played on where I couldn't really ever use my speed to help me. I faired pretty decently though, usually my I-must-win-at-everything-always attitude helps me do ok in most things even when my skill doesn't. I really need to work on my ball handling though.

After having a really good orange off of one of their trees, we went hiking up the mountain behind their house, towards Podocarpus. We took one of the dogs with us, named Conan, who kept trying to carry massive tree sized sticks around with him. We also brought Fátima's cousin, a little girl who was probably only like 6 or so. I like Ecuadorian kids because their Spanish is usually at about the same level as mine.

First we passed their garden and farm, where they had lettuce, cebolla (red onions but that don't taste oniony), ají (peppers), and a bunch of other vegetables and stuff. They also had a lot of plants growing specifically to feed the animals, which I was told was called hierba.

From what I was hearing, the forest up ahead was pretty cool, there was a cave, a waterfall, and mountain crabs. I actually saw a mountain crab in Baños during my hike, but I think I forgot to mention it. Yeah, there are crabs that live in the mountins here. They were even saying that one of them had seen a spectacled bear in the forest there, which from what I've learned by translating stuff at Arcoiris they're very rare. Anyways, we actually didn't make it to any of the cool stuff due to the sun going down, being ill prepared, and being tired from volleyball and soccer. We did get to walk through the really nice grass covered hills and just barely into the actual forest though. But we decided to save the rest for another day.

Back at the finca I got some good pictures of the sunset over the mountains. These were actually the only pictures I got the whole trip, though, mostly because I didn't want to look like a complete gringo tourist and start snapping photos of their house and stuff. They already assumed I didn't speak any Spanish without that.

We said goodbye and got a ride to a small town near Malacatos in the back of their truck, which had to go deliver some eggs and stuff. When we got there we searched the whole place for some chow, but everybody seemed to be out of anything dinner-like. So we settled for some bread and typical corner store stuff to hold us over. I got some awesome mazapan though, which is like a mix between bread and cookies sort of. Like cookies, but not that sweet. It was good.

We waited for a bus there, but there seemed to be tons of people coming back from Vilcabamba/Malacatos for the weekend. We let one full bus pass by, but decided to cram into the next one because it was getting late. I've had some pretty packed bus rides at Michigan, but this one had to beat them. For part of the ride I had people straight standing on my feet, while a guy hung out the open door of the bus. Luckily some people got off before we got to Loja, and it became bearable.

We got off at the same roundabout and said our goodbyes. Next weekend it's fellow US intern Demetri's birthday though, so we planned on all going to Vilcabamba together and maybe the finca again to celebrate that. Hopefully I get to see that cave and waterfall before I leave!