so before i tell you today's main story..i might as well back up and tell you what's gone on since i've last written.
i helped photograph a bride for some bridal portraits which was super super fun and really good for me since i want to be a photographer.
and i took a bus tour around cuenca. which was pretty cool.
so, today...actually all weekend i stayed in yunguilla at my host grandparents huge house thing. i keep telling everyone it's a resort because it practically is. they have an underground pool (if that's what you call pools that are built into the ground?? and they also have a porch which over looks the mountains and you can pretty much see everything. i went there once before when i photographed the peacock..and the first time i wasn't feeling so hot because this place is a little higher up than cuenca. and i was still battling that stupid altitude sickness.
anyway, today my host cousins who are all fairly younger than me..invited me to go with them to the river. my host aunt told me that i should go and that it's really cool. she said "its just like a little creek!" which i figured out later on was a understatement.
my host cousin who had to have been 12 or 13 had helped me the whole entire trip to this little waterfall. i was accompanied by 5 kids... when i asked her how far it would be when we first left she said "ohh about 5 minutes" and later on she said "only a few hours" (HOURS??!!!!!) i figured since they were all pretty young, we probably weren't going anywhere too dangerous, and when i grabbed my camera they all looked at me and said i'd get wet. my host aunt told me i'd be fine and that i just need to be careful. (another understatement/lie)
we went on our way and started walking down the driveway. i followed my host cousins down a little trail..which then got very steep and my host brother took my camera so he could hold on to it for me...which was good because shortly after i took a little slide down that dirt hill. we walked (well, they walked, i slid on my butt) down this steep hill for a few minutes. finally, we reached flat ground, we walked past a beat up shed..that looked like it was once a house...super creepy, i didn't look inside. in my head i was thinking "just keep walking, just keep walking" my host cousin, ariana, the one who helped me the whole time then said "as we get closer it is going to get more difficult." ughhh..can we just go back to the house already!? my nice pair of american eagle jeans that had been hand me downs were covered in dirt on the butt and my cute DC shoes that were not cheap looked like i had walked in poop. awesome.
after walking past the shed and following my little leaders around for a good 20 minutes, i found myself at a huge drop where i could see the river. YES! WE'RE HERE! ...nope. just kidding. after being ordered to jump a good 3 feet down i realized that what they wanted was to walk up the river (on the rocks/boulders on the side) to a very high point with a waterfall. they wanted to swim there. i didn't bring my swimming suit because i figured it'd just a be a little creek and i could take pictures.
i really regret not wearing my swimming suit and even more so i regret wearing jeans and a thick t-shirt. i was SO HOT. the scariest part for me was having to jump from rock to rock across the river. being a little city girl this was super difficult for me. where i come from a "creek" has just about no current at all and you can pretty much cross it by barely stretching your leg out. then again, my city, or state, or country is nothing like where i am at right now.
i found myself always holding the group up and slowing them down because it always took me two minutes two jump from rock to rock. either that or one of the boys who tagged along had to backtrack to where i was to reach out his hand to help me.
after safely managing to make it some way up the mountain, i eventually did get my feet wet. in shoes. and socks. gross. after awhile of walking with one wet foot, i did get the other one wet. and when that happened i sort of was okay with it. because this meant that instead of slowing the group down by taking forever to jump...i could just walk across the river!! and every time someone would say "jump, ashley!" i could smile and just say, "nope!" everyone seemed to find my tactic quite amusing, i thought it was pretty clever...until i found myself walking in knee high water. now my jeans are not only dirty, but wet.
i found myself on top of a huge boulder that i was supposed to jump off of. everyone in our little group had already done so and now they were all screaming in both spanish and english "jump, ashley!! jump!!" or "vamos! salta!" which is "let's go! jump!!" the only thing that i could think of in my head was "here you are ashley...this is where you are going...to die." i could see it now...the most popular news channel in wisconsin covering a story about a foreign exchange student dying in the mountains. and just when i thought i couldn't scare myself anymore. i jumped.
i landed alright. hard. got a few little rocks jabbed in my hands and my ankles hurt a little. moving on.
eventually, i found myself propped up against another boulder heavily breathing and asking my host cousin how much farther. expecting a simple "2 minutes" i got "about an hour" this is a joke. i want to go back. they all somehow convinced me that where we were going lead us to the house...which i later discovered was 100% bullcrap. (i'll refrain from swearing since i know my mom would be upset.....you're welcome mom.) although, my shoes and pants probably did smell like bull shit. (sorry, mom) my host cousin then said "you have to go faster because if you do not hurry the night will come and it will get dark." that's right!!! here in ecuador it's dark by 7! i had no idea what time it was but once again i got a vision in my head of me dying in the mountains because it was dark out and i would fall in the river and die. yup. that's what it's gonna be. that's how i'm gonna die.
after another hour of slipping and falling and practically dying, and getting more wet and being afraid of water snakes and whatever animals live in the fricking mountains we made it! sort of..my host brother pointed at a huge wall of pure rock and said "we climb." uhhh...we what???? i looked at him and did some sign language for climbing which probably made me look like i was mentally unstable, however, it got the point across and we were indeed climbing up this rock wall. which was just the inside of a mountain. okay, okay...THIS is where i'm gonna die. i'm gonna try climbing up this wall, slip and fall backwards into the river and crack my skull on a rock. yup. that's it. that's how i'm gonna go. peace out, everyone.
nope. with the help of the 4 boys that were with me...all much younger than me..i made it. even though it was awkward because they had to push on my butt. i was just glad to me alive and well. when we reached the waterfall they had all wanted to swim in, i had totally regret not wearing my swimming suit underneath my clothes. they all suggested i just swim in my clothes, but that sounded gross to hike all the way back home in. however, i did my fair share of swimming..without getting my top half wet.
my host brother started splashing me. it was super cold and i started screaming. he then directed me to where the sun was shining. i sat there for quite awhile drying off. my shirt dried off but my pants and shoes...well, they might still be wet right NOW! i felt like i should've been singing "i'm not a girl, not yet a woman" by britney spears...if you haven't seen the music video go look it up.
we of course had to go back to the house, meaning i had to climb down the rocks, and re-do everything i did to get there but backwards. there was a waterfall below the waterfall we swam at..and i had my host brother take a picture of me standing in front of it..i attached it to this post for you all to see! jumping was easier, and so was walking through the water...and then it started to rain. i was more worried about the safety of my camera than i was for myself (typical ashley for ya)
when we reached the entrance of our little trail to go back home i was SO excited. but i had totally forgot how steep it was. since it was wet, it was slippery and i kept falling. i was SO TIRED, HUNGRY, THIRSTY AND FRUSTRATED!! everyone kept laughing at me because i was falling and screaming and cursing. it was insane. we found a little shelter to sit under while the rain passed which only took about 10 minutes. and then we continued home. we did finally make it there. and i was SO hungry. and tired. i still am tired. i'm probably going to sleep like a baby tonight.
who knows what tomorrow will bring. all i know is i was mad at the time that i went to the river but now that it's over i'm sooo glad i went. it was good excersice and an awesome adventure! :)
Peace. and HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!
