la finca orgánica

This weekend I took a terribly comfortable overnight bus to the beach with a couple friends of mine.  We went to Bahía and Canoa, for anyone who knows something about beaches in Ecuador.  It was sweet, actually, because Bahía is an eco-city, meaning that they are all hardcore about protecting Mother Earth, recycling, and using bicycles instead of cars.  Beautiful.

The first day we frolicked around on the beach for hours, playing with baby jellyfish (we thought they were snails…silly girls from the Midwest) and picking up shells (which we are going to try to illegally smuggle into the US…if they aren’t all broken from being dropped 90 times).  We even drank milkshakes made with coconut, which were actually covered in little tiny ants…we drank them anyway.  I ate a worm in the jungle, remember?  What harm can an ant (or several ants) do?

The day after that was one of the absolute best days I have had in Ecuador, no joke.  We went to an organic farm and it was incredible.  It was kind of like Naz, but in Spanish.   At said farm, we made our own chocolate, made rings out of palm seeds, ate an amazing vegetarian lunch, learned that pineapples actually grow underground (dude, I always thought they grew on trees…talk about ignorance!), and got to explore the wonders of organic farming as it is put into practice in Ecuador.  I almost didn’t leave, it was so fantastic.

Then we proceeded to take another overnight bus back to Quito…and did not sleep at all because the driver was FLYING like a madman.  Suele pasar.

Two weeks left in this beautiful country and I’m back to the snow and lack of mountains.  That may sound unappealing when I just talked about my trip to the beach, but it sounds beautiful to me right now.  Mmm…snow and hot chocolate and fireplaces…