In Otovalo

So I made it to Ecaudor! I got to Quito late Saturday night, and spent Sunday going to parks and being lazy. I actually slept for about half the day. Quito (what I saw of it) was ok, but I heard that a girl from my hostel got robbed just a block or two away, so I'm glad I wasn't there too long. On Monday I met with the people from the Andean Bear Conservation Project and headed up north to the cloud forests. The volunteer house I'm staying in is two hours by bus from Otovalo, which is the closest internet. But the cloud forest is so amazing it's worth being so far removed. Sometimes you are actually inside the clouds and can barely see the road, other times the cloud lifts and you get incredible views of the mountains and valleys. The only problem is that the air is so damp that your clothes get wet if you leave them out. I haven't had to do laundry yet, and I have no idea how I will get my clothes dry once they're clean.

There is one other volunteer here with me, her name is Athena and she's really great. She lives in Portugal, so she knows enough Portuguese to speak decent Spanish, so I rely on her a lot because my Spanish is awful. I practice speaking with our guides when we go on hikes. We go on a hike everyday, and they get progressively harder. We're always exhausted by the time we get back. The other day we had a little energy, so we decided to start weeding the path that leads up to the house. I wore shorts because I figured I wouldn't be leaving our house, but of course people kept dropping by ''to get a cup of water'' and I felt really indecent (and pale) with my legs showing. We're the first volunteers to come in a few months, so our neighbors are a little curious I guess.

On our hikes we take radio equipment to listen to the bears that have collars. So far we've only heard one bear, Frida, but it's pretty cool when you hear the beeping that means a bear is nearby. Hernando, the program's director, says he wants to trap and collar a bear sometime soon, so we'll get to help with that. That's really cool, because I didn't expect to see a bear while I was here. They're very shy and there's so much jungle that it's difficult to find them. The other night we watched a documentary the BBC did on the ''spectacled'' (or Andean) bear. The narration was really unintentionally funny - they kept making references to Paddington Bear because he came from ''deepest, darkest Peru'' - but the main idea was that very little is known about this bear. Which is cool for us because it means the volunteers are actually gathering some of the first solid data about the andean bear. Hernando probably knows more about them than anyone else because he's been studying them for about 15 years. It's really cool to be a part of this project.

I hope everyone's having a great time in Seattle, I miss you guys!
Clementine