Today was probably my favorite day of the whole trip as far as fun is concerned. It is a holiday, so we decided to take one too! The day started off way to early for most of us with a kindly meant wake up call at 5:30 by our Ecuadorian contact. It was highly ineffective in our apartment since none of us got up till 6:10. No fear, we were on the bus in plenty of time, we were not even last! So we drove about 3 hours outside of Quito to the Cloud Forest, which is a beautiful rain forest up here in the middle of the Andes mountains.
It was quite cold this morning, so we were all huddled on the bus attempting to sleep. I'm sure someone got pictures of it, but it wasn't me, probably a good thing! After taking our bus across rivers, very iffy bridges and crazy roads we were taken in the back of trucks to a cable car of sorts that took us across a large ravine so that we could hike. We sang the Indiana Jones theme song and decided that we didn't have to see the movie because we were living the story. I promise we make the Disney ride look like a kid on a tricycle! I've posted the video, and I know we are all in different keys-please ignore that!
It was a lot of fun and then we got to hike to several waterfalls! Waterfalls are my absolute favorite thing that you can find in nature, followed closely by stars, but waterfalls are first. I was in heaven today-except for the part that we were hiking through some very steep, very muddy trails. Add that to the high altitude, the lack of sleep, lack of food for the day and the fact that we are already all sore- it was quite the
challenge for the day. Luckily we got back out before it started the daily afternoon thunderstorm! Of course the
best part of the day is that we took a tour of the canopy level of the forest. In order to do this we had to travel by a series of 13 zip lines all around the forest! It was so much fun, and was totally worth the 15 dollars. We even got to do some of them upsidown and such. It was the coolest thing to be soaring above the trees all around the rain forest for about an hour and a half. We then had to get back to Quito which included fording more rivers, more hiking and a long bus ride, but it was a great day! We were in the forest for almost 12 hours and I definitely think that it was the best day of our whole trip as far as things related to us. I am very glad to have all the experiences and clinicals have been amazing, but today was so much fun that we all needed desperately after the past 3 weeks of lots of hard work!
It was quite cold this morning, so we were all huddled on the bus attempting to sleep. I'm sure someone got pictures of it, but it wasn't me, probably a good thing! After taking our bus across rivers, very iffy bridges and crazy roads we were taken in the back of trucks to a cable car of sorts that took us across a large ravine so that we could hike. We sang the Indiana Jones theme song and decided that we didn't have to see the movie because we were living the story. I promise we make the Disney ride look like a kid on a tricycle! I've posted the video, and I know we are all in different keys-please ignore that! 
It was a lot of fun and then we got to hike to several waterfalls! Waterfalls are my absolute favorite thing that you can find in nature, followed closely by stars, but waterfalls are first. I was in heaven today-except for the part that we were hiking through some very steep, very muddy trails. Add that to the high altitude, the lack of sleep, lack of food for the day and the fact that we are already all sore- it was quite the
challenge for the day. Luckily we got back out before it started the daily afternoon thunderstorm! Of course the best part of the day is that we took a tour of the canopy level of the forest. In order to do this we had to travel by a series of 13 zip lines all around the forest! It was so much fun, and was totally worth the 15 dollars. We even got to do some of them upsidown and such. It was the coolest thing to be soaring above the trees all around the rain forest for about an hour and a half. We then had to get back to Quito which included fording more rivers, more hiking and a long bus ride, but it was a great day! We were in the forest for almost 12 hours and I definitely think that it was the best day of our whole trip as far as things related to us. I am very glad to have all the experiences and clinicals have been amazing, but today was so much fun that we all needed desperately after the past 3 weeks of lots of hard work!
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