having a heat wave . . .

I just got back from a couple days in the jungle near Tena. It was a lot of fun, especially since I got to go swimming. I stayed at the house of the family of a friend who was working at one of the hostels in my town. The bus ride from Quito to Tena was absolutely beautiful since we were going from snow capped mountains to steamy jungle in 5 hours. There were all these incredible waterfalls along the way too. Then when I finally got off the bus it was like stepping out into a sauna. It actually felt good for the first few minutes until a started sweating buckets. The first day there we wandered around town a bit and went swimming at the river. The swimming wasn´t great at there because the current was pretty fast, but it was the closest spot to the house to cool off in. The next day we went to a better swimming spot which are what the pictures are from. I thought it would just be a couple of us going for part of the day, but it ended up being the whole family. It was a lot of fun goofing around with the kids and just paddling around. We also had a big picnic lunch complete with salad, pork, and yucca. The only downside was that I scraped up my nose when I was doing a handstand and slipped. Oh well! The next day we visited this little island where there is a little zoo and botanical garden. I can't tell you the animals I saw because I only heard the names in Spanish or Kichwa but I think one was a cotamundi and another was a spider monkey. Yesterday I left and spent a little bit of time wandering around Quito and then caught a bus back. I'm already thinking about where I went to go for another little vacation. As long as we travel in Ecuador and aren´t gone for more than 4 or 5 days every month or two we don't have to use vacation days. Maybe I'll go visit the coast and take surfing lessons =)