"This is going to be the experience of a lifetime! Your Spanish-speaking skills will be... existent after this trip! You're going to get to see rainforests, cloud-forests, volcanoes and a million other different but beautiful terrains. You even get to go the Galapagos and swim in those blue waters with marine iguanas and seals. And a sea lion is going to blow bubbles in your face!!"
"But (insert expletive here)!!! Your Spanish is so basic you can't understand yourself when you speak it! You are going to be entirely dependent on Molly to communicate for you, which is going to be so lonely... not to mention you're going to be faced with gastro-intestinal problems you've only imagined in your worst nightmare!"
"But the beautiful landscapes! Volunteering with children! Taking time to write about new experiences! Self-growth! And the sea lions, Elizabeth, the sea lions!..."
"Sea lions? You are afraid to go in the water. Which is not the only thing that should scare you. Robbery and crime... not to mention your tiny little budget. You are going to run out of money."
"Hiking the Inca Trail! The Andes! The Amazon! Children! Sea lions!"
"Getting lost, getting abducted, running out of money, not knowing what to do..."
And so I continue, back and forth in my own head, from pre-trip euphoria to pre-trip nausea.
Fortunately, Molly and I have gotten a lot of planning done lately, so I have been on a constant high for the past several weeks (and booking our Galapagos trip may have had something to do with it). Concrete plans ease my anxieties a little. Additionally, Molly and I have been in contact almost every day, and I love to talk to Molly... especially when it involves exchanging travel information - an act which, for me, makes the trip all the more real. It's actually happening! Woohoo!
There may be some of you who are saying to yourselves right now, "Pre-trip nausea? What trip? Elizabeth didn't tell me she was going on a trip! Molly? Who is this 'Molly' character? What the hell is going on?" I realize I have not kept everyone in the loop; this blog is a solution to that problem. And the first step I'll take to right the wrong I've done by NOT filling everyone in on my plans is to provide the trip details I know this far. And so...
On Monday, February 25, I'll be leaving from Raleigh to fly to San Jose, Costa Rica, where I will meet my friend Molly (see photo to left... Molly's on the left, and I am the masked figure on the right) that I met and worked with while interning at the O'Keeffe Museum last summer. Molly is headed to Smith in the fall, and Molly is incredibly awesome. Example: Molly's been planning to go to South America since last summer, and when I decided that I ALSO wanted to go, she was nice enough to include me in her trip and work with me in trip planning so we will both get to do things that we want. Molly is also practically fluent in Spanish and will be my lifeline as I am struggling to communicate in the beginning. Moreover, she is fantastically exciting and I know that we are going to have a great time. In short, Molly is the perfect travel companion because she possesses the three Fs: Flexibility, Fluency and Fun!So, I'll arrive in San Jose sometime on the afternoon of the 25th, Molly will pick me up from the airport, and we'll be spending a few days with her family friends in San Jose. From there, we'll be headed out of the big city to do a home stay with a Costa Rican family as well as some short trips (to the beach, to the rainforest, to the cloud forest, etc.) I'm hoping the three weeks we'll spend in Costa Rica will give me the opportunity to work on my Spanish so I won't be totally bewildered when we get to Ecuador.
On March 12, we'll fly from San Jose to Quito, Ecuador. From there, we'll be taking a cross-country bus to Esmeraldas, on the coast of Ecuador, where we'll meet my friend Tyler. Tyler's a friend I met in college who's in the Peace Corps in Esmeraldas, and he's been kind enough to offer Molly and me his spare bedroom for the couple of months we plan on staying in Ecuador. Once in Esmeraldas, we'll get established with a volunteer group we're planning on working with for the duration of our stay. I'll be working with Manos Unidas, the program Tyler's been working on there (the Manos Unidas website is http://www.manos-unidas.org/). So, in Ecuador, we'll volunteer a lot and travel around the country a little, and hopefully have the opportunity to get to see the tropical Andes, the Amazon rainforest, Quito, and maybe Baños.
At the end of our stay, on April 30, we'll head back to Quito to meet with our group that's traveling to the Galapagos! Thanks to a generous birthday present from Mom and Dad, Molly and I are going to get to spend seven days on a yacht island-hopping in the Galapagos, doing everything from hiking to bird-watching to swimming with sea lions (the prospect of swimming with sea lions is the most exciting to me). Once our luxury trip ends on May 6 (the brochure says to expect to "rough it" a little, though surely our week on a yacht in the Galapagos will be the most comfortable part of our experience... unless seasickness enters the equation), we'll be headed back to Quito where we're hopping a bus to Lima, Peru - a 24 to 72 hour bus ride, according to various different sources (ouch). We'll spend the last 2 weeks of our trip in Peru, exploring Lima, hiking the Inca trail to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, and maybe even venturing south to Lake Titicaca... though our Peru plans aren't close to finalized (there is so much to do in Peru, it's hard to commit to a plan). I'll be back stateside on May 21.
My trip is sure to be both exciting and challenging. If you want to stay in the loop (or, procrastinate and not pay attention in class... Rebekah Elizabeth Bourland), you can check the blog and hopefully I'll have both stories and pictures to share. I don't know how frequently I'll be able to post, but hopefully enough to whet your appetite for adventuring vicariously through me.
Ecuador, here I come!
