Tena, Tena, Tena, Tena

Forgot to mention how at the bus terminal all the ticket sales people are just constantly yelling out the names of the towns to which their busses go. So, as you're sitting there, for say, 2 1/2 hours waiting to go to Tena, you hear the call "Tena, Tena, Tena, Tena, Tena" at least a hundred times. Plus, there's "Ambato, Ambato, Ambato, Ambato" and "Banhos, Banhos, Banhos." Eva and I almost decided to go somewhere else while we were waiting since some of those yellers are so damn insistant!

Anyway, back to Tena, where I spent the afternoon walking through town until I found myself at the Parque Amazonica. It was $2 to get in, so I almost didn't go (that's pretty steep by Ecuadorian standards, especially in Tena), but I had a bunch of hours to kill and nothing to do, so I figured why not. After about 20 minutes wandering around, I passed a group of kids. One of them (Denise, the second from the left) called out to me "Senhora, Senhora, wait, wait. Do you know this park? Can you help us? Can we walk with you?" I told her I didn't know it, but that they could walk with me. They were apparently on a school assignment to collect different plants and put together some kind of presentation. I hung out with this little crowd for a bit



and then we were joined by three others.

(me, Sharol, Alexandra, Denise, Cristian, Andreina, Jennifer - with the leaf infront of her face - Andres, and Rubi)
So, I spent the afternoon running around the park with a bunch of 10-12 year olds and had a blast. They were constantly joking around with each other and trying to hold my hand (there were actually a few near battles over that). After a few hours in the park we headed out to share a Coke (and a smile - okay, couldn't resist). Then everyone but Denise and Alexandra left and we hung out a bit longer. Finally, I walked with Denise to the place her mom works (a place for making telephone calls). We all chatted for a while and then I left to head back up the hill to meet up with Edison for dinner. We then walked all the way back down to the river, across from the park for a pizza, and then I headed back to Carlos' place. He showed up about an hour later. We chatted for a bit and headed to bead so we could be ready for the taxi to pick us up at 8 to get the cacao loaded up and head to Salinas.


So here are the guys loading up 11 125 lb bags (and 1 65 lb bag) of cacao along with all our crap and 6 people including the driver into an extended cab pickup to drive 8 hours to Salinas. YAY!!

And here's what about half of the drive to Salinas looked like. Let me tell you how much fun that ride was.

Can you all even imagine roads being open to traffic looking like this??
And to make matters worse, the whole way there everyone was speaking in a mix of spanish and kichua so i couldn't understand much of what was going on around me, and, this great air freshener that you see above smelled like a urinal cake. Mix that with the ever present dust from those great roads, and just enough b.o. and you have a fanatastic ride.

We stopped in Ambato for lunch sometime around 3 and nothing much was open so we wound up at a chicken place where I had a palid version of a salad and bad fries for lunch (for 75 cents).

There were, however, some really interesting things along the way, like a town where every store sold jeans (very strange, though on the way back to Quito a week later I also passed through a town where basically every store sold ice cream. it's all a bit odd).

Here there were people packing produce along the side of the road (here it's carrots)

This whole family in partially traditional garb speeding past us on a motorbike.

And if I could only remember the damn name of this awesome snow capped mountain . . .


obviously we were getting pretty high (here, we're above the clouds). Salinas is at 3500 meters above sea level.

We finally arrived in Salinas (this is the central square,

but you wouldn't have known that cuz it was pitch black when we arrived sometime around 7:30). Also, nothing was open so we were at this french fry/burger place for dinner (here they sell these fry dishes that are essentially fries with some form of fried meat on top, usually some kind of hot dog or sausage. it's really popular. ) so, needless to say, i had my second meal of fries for the day. fabulous!! oh yeah, and i bought a tube of cookies to suppliment (the most substantive junk food I could find at the telephone place, the only other open place on the square).

I also discovered that after all that, we were still heading off to work, not so sleep. So, after "food" and dropping our stuff off at the lodging house . . .
(the common room)

(one of the two rooms where all 9 of us stayed, with one nasty bathroom)

we headed off to the fabrica, the chocolate factory to prep the molds and fold the packaging for the chocolate bars.


Finally went back to go to sleep at about midnight. At about 2 in the morning there was lots of commotion and people all getting dressed. Of course nobody told me anything, and finally I got out of bed to ask what the hell was going on. I was told people were going to work, but I could stay and rest. At least I finally figured out that not everyone was going to the fabrica so it wasn't just that they were letting me off the hook.

Anyway, I think that's enough for now. I know there is still basically another week of updating, but it's gonna take a few : )