Podocarpus National Park

This week I visited my 9th Ecuadorian national park. I think that I'm doing pretty well for this being only my second time in the country.

On Monday, we took the bus to Zamora, a small but beautiful riverside town in southern Ecuador. Then, the next day, we hiked through the lowlands of Podocarpus. It was interesting to see cloud forest at only 900 m (which now seems incredibly low). We heard tons of birds, but sadly, they were all out of view, so I didn't get to add more species to my Ecuador checklist. However, we did see leafcutter ants! Although they're incredibly common in rainforest, they don't do well at high altitudes, so we hadn't seen any all term. After the hike, we cooled off by playing in the river, which was quite cold and fun.

Next, we headed to Loja and the highlands of Podocarpus. (It's a large park!) This hike was more similar to the area around our base camps, although it included primary forest in addition to secondary. Also, it was not as steep for most of the climb, making the hike much easier.

That night, we headed to Vilcabamba, a tourist town where the locals are known to live for quite a long time. This time we stayed at a tourist resort, which was quite odd. All the visitors were white and speaking English. All of us had slight culture shock at that. We were so used to any spoken English being directed at us and didn't know how to handle so much of it. Or how to ask for rooms in English, or order food in English.... Ummmm... going back to the states will be odd.

Still, the resort was nice, and we got some bird watching in the next morning before heading back to Cuenca.

Then, this morning we cleaned the house and worked on packing, but I have a bit more left. It's strange to realize that we're flying out of Cuenca in the morning. Then, Alex and Tim are heading back to the states, while Elizabeth and I spend some time around Quito before leaving just before our visas expire.

Almost there....

Done. Done. Done. In the past few days, I've taken three exams, written three final papers, given a powerpoint presentation and finished up a creative project (building a globo). It is so nice not to have to worry about any of those any more.

However, this is not to say that my program is done. We intentionally finished our classes a week early so that we could have one more vacation. Yeah, this is our third vacation in a 12 week program.

Anyways, we're now just outside of Podocarpus National Park where we'll be enjoying our last few days school-free. It seems a bit odd that the time has flown so quickly, though we've also done a lot, so it is believeable. I still feel like there is so much left to see in Ecuador, so maybe I'll just have to return.