Weekend Adventures and Stuff

(From 9-21-2007, Originally likemikeposts.com)

Mom, do you remember when you asked me what I would do if all my friends jumped off a cliff... Well I must confess, I live in a place that holds an abundance of exotic things from which to jump... No cliffs yet, and I promise there is always a rope. And I´m pretty sure it´s all safe.

Man, what, it´s been like three-fourish weeks and it feels like much longer. I´ve had some of the most amazing nights and weekends of my life, met tons of really excited and fun new people, but am starting to fall a little behind in my classes... This is not good. I really am trying to be responsible, and I really like all my classes, but there is so much to be excited about.

The weekend after the Otavalo trip, I went to a place called Baños. It is famous for it´s world class but budget friendly adventure opportunities. I think it was by far the most beautiful places I´ve ever seen. Perched in the jungle highlands, the town rests with jungle and high mountains, an infinite, wild, mysterious and foggy, ready to be explored in whatever way you can think of. I think you could go there ten times and never do the same thing twice. Our group of four spent the beginning of Saturday riding a chiva (a bus with seats on the roof) through tunnels, getting splashed by water that just flows off the mountains freely and exploring all the possibilities. There is a bridge that you can go to and pay like fifteen dollars to jump off of (again, with a rope) and I was going to do that on Sunday but we left earlier than we thought we would because one of the girls got a parasite :-S. Until next time. Before the parasite, though, we hiked a nice distance to a pretty big waterfall and after that we decided that we would go canyoning. I still can´t figure out why they don´t call it something else, because we were repelling off of waterfalls

and then jumping into the pools. It was pretty awesome and I think we all felt like badasses after we repelled down the final, 50 meter waterfall. I went first and took the camera to film and take a few snapshots of the three girls after me. Did I mention the rest of the group of badasses besides me were all girls? They are fearless and incredible.

On the whole, I am finding myself mostly humbled by the women I encounter on a day to day basis. Aside from the things I am learning about women of the past and feminine identity in some of my classes, I am humbled by the contemporary competition, academic and otherwise. For some reason, for many reasons, I am sure, in my classes and activities I am finding more women than men. I don´t know if it´s because of what I study, or what, but I do know that they all mean business.

The weekdays are pretty normal. I have a lot to read and have gotten to know wery well a feeling of being a little behind all the time. There is always something to go out and see: jazz concerts, tons of places to eat, movies, and I live right next to Mariscal, the late-night district. Last week I got to interview six police officers about things like gender, corruption, and violence for my Cultural Anthropology class. I hope the teacher likes it because I don´t think that most of the people in the class had as interesting of questions.

Last weekend some of the other students and I formed a group of eight and went to a tiny town called Mindo. It is famous for it´s butterfly sanctuary that we checked out on Sunday. The first day we rented some horses and rode them up to a little cable car. On the other side of this huge valley was a long hike to a crazy beautiful waterfall. This waterfall thing seems to be pretty popular; I can´t imagine it ever getting old. It was sureal. We were swimming in a hidden wonder. The walls around were high and a very real green. It almost felt indoors because next to the walls, the sky seemed so far away. For a few hours we were the Swiss Family Robinson. The water was cold but worth it. We walked back to the cable car where the girl who operated amazed us as she rode the length of the ride standing OUTSIDE the cart. --Again with that humbled feeling-- She was laughing when we told her how amazingly brave - or crazy she is.

The Sunday Mindo brought us was pretty calm. After the butterfly gardens a friend named Tracy and I went to the Canopy in mindo where they have set up a series of cables for all your inner Tarzan needs. Some of the cables are short enough that you can go alone. They give you a climbing harness and some leather glove which, after the proper instruction, you use as brakes. However, on the larger ones, they attach the novice to the guide in either the Superman (face-down) or Butterfly (face-up position). You get to know the guide pretty well in either of these positions, however, at that speed I was glad he was stopping us and not me. The guides we had were both really funny and I could tell they enjoy thier job. However, nothing compared to when Tracy, on one of the smaller cables, maybe a hundred feet or so, jumps and is flying when all of the sudden, a renegade jungle cow runs right into her path. Quick thinking and cat-like jungle reflexes were the only thing that saved her from the high-speed tenderizing of the left side of this large brown piece of wild moving hamburger. Between this and the many four-wheelers you can rent by the hour, it was a lot of high speed fun.

This next week looks pretty calm. I still have a little bit of official paperwork to file with The Man here. And I am a little behind in my reading, but not worried. This weekend a smaller group of students and I are planning a little trip to a place called Latacunga (I think that´s how you spell it) for the ¨festival de la mama negra¨ I don´t know what this means... hopefully it is also awesome and will provide interesting new info for your reading pleasure.