Friday morning, we had a health brigade just outside Quito at the largest market I've ever seen, with overflowing amounts of food, clothing, and various handmade goods. We began seeing patients in the cramped corner of a conference room, then a 300 person meeting started in the middle of the clinic and we were moved to the center of the market place! It was complete chaos trying to diagnose patients while being watched by onlookers and hounded by vendors to buy their products. Some of our most interesting patients of the day were a 4-year-old girl with recurring headaches after a fall and a little boy who'd scratched his bug bites so hard he wound up with a large open wound on the side of his foot. It's hard not having modern technology like x-rays or CT scans, but I'd like to think that we still do some good for the patients by writing prescriptions to reduce pain or eliminate their parasites (yes, I can write prescriptions here despite never having taken pharmacology!).
After the clinic, I rushed back home to pack and eat a quick lunch, then we had the whole weekend free and it was off to Mindo. I met two of the other girls and we shared a taxi to the bus station, about a 40 minute ride through traffic. Despite arriving over an hour early, we barely secured seats on the last bus of the day headed towards our destination. Luckily all 16 of us that made the trip got tickets and we shared a very interesting 2 hour ride that involved passing vehicles around blind turns, barreling down the mountain at speeds no bus should reach, and listening to staticky American 80s music on repeat.
Thankfully, the weekend was well worth the perilous journey. We arrived to the small town of around 5,000 people and headed to the hostel. The place was absolutely beautiful with a courtyard and nice clean rooms. I stayed with two friends from my program, Kirsten and Jenny, who both attend medical school at the University of Arizona. The decor was very reminiscent of something you'd find in the Southwest and it turned out the owner of the hostel is actually a graduate of the University of Arizona nursing school. She met her husband while working in the peace core here and her and her husband have built the hostel from the ground up. The property they purchased didn't even have running water, so they've done an incredible job turning it into what they have today. We got in around dinnertime and had a wonderful steak dinner at the hostel that was a pleasant reminder of home. A decadent brownie finished the meal and despite how much I'm enjoying Ecuador, it was definitely nice to have some American comforts for a few days. However, the best part of the accommodations had to be the owner's two adorable 10-week-old puppies that loved to cuddle and play with anyone who'd give them attention. We eventually peeled ourselves away from the dogs and headed to bed early in preparation for a big day of adventures.
On Saturday, I filled up on a yummy breakfast of fried eggs and toast with jam, heading out with 6 of the others around 8:30. We took a 15 minute taxi ride up to the top of the mountain, then nervously crossed the canyon using a cable car held up by two ropes hundreds of feet over the forest canopy below. After reaching the other side, we hiked for a little over three hours and saw four gorgeous waterfalls. It was a great time bonding with my fellow classmates, taking pretty pictures, and working off some of the brownie I ate the night before along with the second one I was powerless to resist later on in the day!
After the return trip on the cable car, we walked about a half an hour back down the mountain and found the ziplines. I got strapped into the harness, then anticipation built up right before the first take-off. Fear quickly turned to elation and even after completing the 13 line course I was still wanting more. There isn't anything quite like flying over the trees with a 360 degree panoramic mountain landscape surrounding you in all directions. I even did one of them in mariposa (butterfly) position, which is completely upside down!
Fresh off the high, we walked the half hour back into town and grabbed some milkshakes then relaxed for a bit. At 6:30, we headed to the famous frog concert, which we had as much confusion about as you probably did when you just read the phrase. We arrived at a hostel with cabins surrounding a lake, where the owners have built up a population of frogs and other animals native to the area. You could hear the frogs quite loudly so we think that was supposed to be the concert, but we were a little disappointed none of the frogs played the banjo or sang "kiss the girl" from The Little Mermaid. The guides did take us on a pretty cool tour in the dark though, with their flashlights highlighting the various species. In addition to frogs, we also saw spiders, an orange firefly that lights up just 2 weeks of the year, an armadillo cave, and a log that glowed neon green. The reason for the crazy reaction on the log is because of microorganisms found in only 3 other places in the world that shine when there's 80-90% humidity.
Saturday night most of us hung out at the hostel, which was a nice way to get to know some of the girls I hadn't yet had the opportunity to spend much time with. We woke up pretty early again on Sunday, had another wonderful breakfast, then walked about 40 minutes to the butterfly conservatory. It was a big netted enclosure with dozens of different species of butterflies in all shapes and colors. I got to hold a few of them and even saw one emerge out of the cocoon, so awesome! We then headed to an 11:30 appointment at the local chocolate shop to witness how they make it from scratch. We watched him roast the cocoa beans, then we helped peel them open to reveal the unprocessed chocolate inside. We ground it up, heated them up again, and added copious amounts of cream and brown sugar. It turned out to be the most amazing fondu I've ever had and we each received a delicious bowl of fresh fruit to enjoy it with.
Prior to our 2 o'clock departure, a bunch of us found some fantastic wood fired personal pizzas for just over $1 at a bakery where I also bought pan de chocolate (chocolate bread) for 30 cents that I ate later and was to die for. Thankfully, the bus ride back was not quite as scary as the drive to Mindo had been. Close to Quito is a place called Mitad del Mundo, a tourist attraction on the Equator. We stopped there rather than driving straight back and took excessive amounts of silly pictures standing over the line dividing the hemispheres. It was a great way to wrap up some of the best days of my trip thus far.
This morning was my first day of job shadowing at a local hospital to experience the life of a doctor in Ecuador. I'm paired with my friend Kristyn who'd never taken Spanish before this trip, so it was scary to be the advanced speaker in the partnership but I think I did a pretty good job translating. Our doctor is an ob/gyn and is absolutely hilarious-if any of you watch Grey's Anatomy, she's a Spanish replica of Cali with similar looks and the same abrasive personality but with a kind heart underneath. She works for the public sector, where she makes $15,000 a year and is extremely limited in what procedures she can perform and what medicines she can prescribe based on government mandates. I got to see a couple of pretty cool things and even heard the rapid buzzing of a fetal heart beat for the first time ever.
In the afternoon, I had a 2 hour Spanish lesson with one other girl in the program who's at a similar level of proficiency as me. I learned a ton since it was such personalized instruction and I'm looking forward to having that learning opportunity each day this week. That's about it for now, I just had a delicious white lasagna for dinner and I think I'm going to try to look over some verb tenses before bed so I'm prepared for tomorrow. Buenas noches!
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