nicaragua debriefing

Hi Everyone!

Sorry for abandoning my blog the past week. We have been sweating through Nicaragua and are now a group of 5 so it makes life a little more technical. Here is a quick breakdown of our travels....

• April 21st, we arrived in Granada and were welcomed with heat and beautiful colonial buildings. We took a horse carriage around the city and Julie showed us her old stomping grounds. 
• April 22nd, Good Friday, we took a 30 minute shuttle to the most amazing crater lake, Laguna de Apoyo, at the top of a volcano. We kayaked, swam, jumped off docks, floated in innertubes, read on hammocks and played banana grams. It was excellent. 
• April 23rd, we took a cab to an hour long ferry to another hour long cab to arrive at our secluded lodge on the island of Ometepe. We were thoroughly exhausted and spent the afternoon reading, walking along the beach and planning for our adventure the next day
• April 24th, we did an awesome tour of Ometepe island. Our guide, Luis ,was super hungover (why do we always get hungover guides) and we took a hike to a beauftiful and refreshing waterfall. We then drove to a nearby beach and kayaked to an island with monkeys (i didn't get out of the boat after learning how agressive monkeys can be in Thailand a few years ago!) and then we ended the day by going to a peaceful natural lagoon where we took underwater photos and got eaten alive by bugs!
• April 25th, we left Ometepe on the most overly crowded ferry I have ever taken (and I have been on some sketchy ferrys in my life). We then arrived at San Juan del Sur, an adorable surf town on the Pacific coast. We spent the afternoon splashing in the waves and coming to terms with the fact that it is well over 90 degrees and humid as shit and we have no AC
• April 26th, we  had an awesome breakfast at a nearby cafe and bookstore and hopped on a shuttle to the nearby surf beach. We rented boards and took surf lessons from a nicaraguan surf diva. It was awesome! I had a lot of success and went back out in the waves on my own a bit later. we got back into San Juan del Sur annd were a bit sun stricken and exhausted. We had dinner at a cute restaurant nearby and quickly two members of our group had to go home from feeling sick. Long story very short, we were all up nearly all night with one girl violently ill, one with some sort of flu, three of us wildly overheated and all the electricity off (meaning no fans to even make a breeze). We awoke this morning ready to get to costa rica and to the air conditioning! We depart on a bus in 2 hours. more from CR!

No Internet!

Hi everyone! How quickly I had forgotten how inefficient central america can be. Neither of our hostels with "wifi" have any semblance of real Internet connection. We are on a very cool island called ometepe. Our hotel is not quite all it promised to be but there are 5 of us so we have eachother! We went on an awesome tour of the island today. Waterfall hike, kayaking in the lake out to an island with monkeys, and swimming in a natural lagoon. All together a great day. Now awaiting dinner and reading water for elephants.

Tomorrow we head to a surf town on the pacific called San Juan del sur. Surf lessons on Tuesday!

Happy Easter to everyone too. I miss home and I feel homesick today looking back on my Easter last year and other events of the past. Sending you all a big hello and write me an email if you ever feel like it!!

Lauren Verrilli
Sent from my iPhone

Nicaragua, I am sweaty

we are in nicaragua! Actually in the town of granada and three more girls from seattle have joined us. This computer is impossibly slow so I will have to post more later. Tomorrow we are going to a crater lake for a swim! It is so hot here, wow it was cold in South america I guess. More later... adios!

Bienvenidos a la Seder!

On Monday night, Julie and I went to the local habad for the seder. Julie is jewish and this is actually my second seder as I went to a very casual one last year in San Francisco. We got to the habad and it had beautiful kitchen, dining room etc. The men were praying in another room facing the wall and the women in the dining room. I was a little turned off by the segregation but after the first prayer we all intermixed and it was great!

The story of the Passover was read in three languages! First hebrew, then English, then Spanish. We arrived at 7 pm and by 1030 we had been given a small piece of matzoh to eat. I was starving! Aside from the pace, the seder was a lot of fun. We met tons of traveling israleis, europeans, americans, ecuadorians etc. Everyone was very welcoming and didn´t mind that I didn´t speak hebrew! We sang lots of fun songs and drank this wine that tasted like flate coca cola.

We had arranged  for a cab to pick us up at 1030 and at that time I was nearly passing out from lack of food so I went back to the hostel with a plate of food to go (the rabbi´s wife was so sweet!) and Julie didn´t make it home until 1 am. She said they ate at 1130! She is a very good jew!

We made friends with an Israeli/Brittish banana farmer living in Columbia who was at the Seder and also at our hostel. We also met a few American girls studying abroad and tons of Israeli´s traveling.

All in all I had a great time celebrating the passover, and also it was cool to see how laid back Jewish traditions are. Everyone is friends, they drink, they chat, they have a good time!

Now julie cant eat bread for 8 days. woof to that!

La Mitad del Mundo and the Egg Tricks

Today we headed out to La Mitad del Mundo-- the middle of the earth! We actually were able to take a cab there.. it is only 40 minutes outside of Quito proper. We started out by going to the monument and checking out the equatorial line. The area is a bit like the seattle center with some open spots and other small museums and exhibits. We checked out the insectarium and were thoroughly grossed out by the GIANT beatles.

Anyway, we then headed over to the museum that had all the cool exhibits and tours. It was awesome. We started out by seeing some of the indigenous buidings (the musem actually brought some of the tribal members to the area to build a hut, since many of the tribes still exisit in the amazon). We also saw the process by which the tribal people used to "shrink skulls." It was pretty gross actually, the basically decapitated a person, took out all the bones and sewed the skin of the face together really tightly to make a mask of some sort.

We then moved on to seeing some of the properties of the equator (enter my nerdy science self!). First we filled a sink with water and watched it go down the drain clockwise in the southern hemisphere, counter clockwise in the northern and straight down the drain on the line. It was pretty cool (maybe a hoax but I don´t know how they could have staged it!).

Next we got to actually test our own dexterity and patience (not always my strongest suit) and balance an egg on the equator on top of a nail. The idea is that at the equator gravity pulls the yolk exactly down and so the egg doesn´t roll to one side or the other. After a couple minutes of attempts both Julie and I nailed it  (pun intended!). it was also very cool, don{t worry I photo documented.

We also go to try some cool tricks using our natural forces. It was much easier to force eachother´s arms down on the equator and much harder to walk in a straigh line on the equator. I guess both of these reasons were due to the gravitational pull being exactly perpindicular to our location. Man, I am so glad I don´t have to take physics or the MCAT again. The equator is the type of physics I can get on board with :)

p.s. another rabies vaccine coming soon.

First times in Ecuador

It seems that Ecuador is a place for some firsts for myself. Here are a few (in no particular order)

My First Time....

• Riding a bike through the jungle with a helmet that looks like a baseball helmet
• Seeing multiple dead/skinned pigs hanging outside small shacks on the road
• Seeing a truck full of chickens drive by and a poor women sitting with the chickens looking miserable
• hitchhiking (safely!)
• swimming in a dique (river pool)
• getting bit by a dog on top of a mountain (which i was not petting!)
• rushing into a clinic and getting a rabies vaccine
• luckily meeting an emergency room doc who told me it most likely wasn´t rabid and the infection isn´t moving toward my heart
• playing a really fun new card game called eucher (i´ll teach it to clar, mel, jebb etc!)
• meeting a bachelor party who told us that baños was like the ecuadorian vegas 
• salsa dancing until 2 am!
• seeing a guy on the dance floor get a bottle smashed on his face and subsequently pass out in a pool of blood
• watching the american ER doc rush to the scene and stabalize the guy
• riding horses through the ecuadorian hills 
• going in hot baths at the base of a volcano
• chugging a bottle of gatorade on the bus only to realize that there was no bathroom and i had 3 more hours to go

We are now back in Quito. It is raining and I miss the carefree life of Baños. Tomorrow... to the middle of the world!! 

Biking through the Ecuadorian Jungle

We arrived in Baños on April 13th and were totally wiped out. On the 14th we decided to explore all this small mountain town had to offer. Taking the advice of a few friends, we rented mountain bikes (for $6.00 each) and set out down the only road out of baños in search of some waterfalls and jungle!

The road was really beautiful and at first it was very downhill. After about 20 mins on our bikes the scenery changed from rolling green hills covered in tall trees to lush, green rainforest with the most beautiful flowers (orchids), banana trees, tomato trees, guavas, oranges, corn everything! We biked to a beautiful waterfall called Pailon de Diablo for lunch and got to climb to the top of the waterfall.

We then continued on our bike ride and it got a little hilly and a little hot. We made it in total about 33 miles to a small town that we had been told had a small dique at the end of the road. It turned out to be an awesome pooling of one of the rivers that they basically made into a natural pool (equipped with slides even). We had brought our swimsuits and jumped in for a dip! It got me excited for Lake Washington. A very nice family came over and said hi to us and (naturally) handed us thier 2 month old son, George Oswald, to hold. It was really fun to hold the little munchkin and the family was delightful.

We then heaved our bikes back up the hill and caught a ride back to Baños. We hadn´t realized how far we had ridden. It ended up being almost 8 hours on the bike!

Baños is known for their naturally occuring hot springs (from the nearby volcano) and we lined up just before 6 pm to go in for an evening soak. There were 3 pools and the hottest of the three was scalding! It felt good, but only for about 6 minutes before I thought I might have a stroke. We then ventured upstairs to the warm and cold pools. It was a great and a really cool local attraction. All the locals lined up in their bathrobes and towels and got together and chatted in the pools. We loved it so much I am headed back there now. :)

Adios!