Tranquilo

And our adventures continue. Grow always builds in a day or two of R&R at the end of the week to help bridge the transition between the service we do and the cultural changes we experience and the fast pace of our normal routines. This week Dr. Zambrano, the leader of the project we worked with, built two full days into the schedule for us. For him, it made figuring out the logistics of transportation for two large teams easier. For us, it meant seeing more of one country than we've seen on any trip in the past-a fantastic benefit!

Friday morning we woke up to beautifully lush tropical surroundings-and the news that Thursday night had been Bob's turn with the bug plaguing our team this week and that Adam was not feeling 100% either. Bob needed the day to rest but Adam was determined to ignore it and hopefully feel better. So we began our day of nonstop adrenaline rushes.

A large taxi and tour guide came and gave us several choices on what we could do with our day in Mindo, a town in a cloud forest. We settled on going to a butterfly sanctuary first and loved it. Then the 10 of us all went ziplining, a first for many of us! It was exhilarating and utterly stunning views! The guides even taught us tricks like the superman and the butterfly across the lines! Pictures will be coming soon!

Next 8 of us-everyone but me and Olivia-decided to go rappelling down a waterfall! All of us hiked to a cable bridge and then the rest of them had a ridiculously difficult cling up to a waterfall while Olivia and I sat for an hour or so at the riverside and solved world problems (sadly, we couldn't see the waterfall from where we were at so we have no pictures). Definitely a scarier experience but some of them loved it while other said they were glad they did it but probably wouldn't do it again. All of these activities in about 5 hours of time. We know how to live!

The team was wet and sweaty after that and we needed to check out of our little paradise even though the kind innkeeper had extended our time to 3:30. So we drove back to the inn so people could shower and change, stored our luggage, then walked a half mile to the delicious cafe we had eaten in the night before. It was equally delightful the second time around! And while we were there, the innkeeper called the cafe to see if we were there (we had forgotten to tell her where we were going but there aren't too many places to eat in Mindo!) to tell us our taxi was coming in 20 minutes to get us to take us to the top of the hills to meet our bus. Dr. Z had arranged for the bus that was taking the doctors and dentists back to Quito to pick us up along the way. So our taxi took us up to the highway to meet the bus and we waited about 45 minutes along the side of the road at a bus stop for the big bus to pick us up. It arrived around 6 pm and we drove the next two hours in the dark and the fog along the windy roads until we reached the beautiful city of Quito. We dropped the medical team off at various points in the city, made a longer pit stop at Charity Anywhere's offices, and then began our two hour drive to the even higher city of Otavalo...