Maybe I Should go to Ecuador

 The Average Tourist wants to go places where there are no tourists - Sam Ewing

One evening this past March I enjoyed dinner with a friend who has lived and worked in Ecuador off and on for the last 5 years and hopes to have a non-profit providing therapy (in various forms) to the locals operational within the year. She was heading down for most of April to check in with her people, scope for her clinic, and just re-connect with her Ecuadorian Self. 

While she explained this to me over naan bread and chai tea I tried to build boxes for her world there in my brain. I liked that she had become so close with a family and had a very "grass roots" experience of the country, but still couldn't get my arms around what it was exactly she was trying to accomplish there. Then I got this crazy idea (which didn’t seem so crazy) that maybe I should go see about Ecuador myself. Clearly an impulsive motivation it didn’t feel like the destructive impulsive decisions that you regret later on or that really do seem insane.  Actually it all seemed very logical. I still had a week of vacation to use before July, and had been saving up for a trip I was going to go on with another friend, but it had fallen through. The solution seemed obvious.

Within the week I was booking airfare into Guyaquil, a city I had never even heard of, and even after the purchase asking my friend where it was we were going to be again? Had I been setting out on my own I clearly would have been woefully unprepared, but between my friend’s extensive experience in the country and a readiness to be available for anything and everything, in true vacation style I willingly relinquished the control I wield so intensely in workplace mode and let my spontaneous streak out for a little. 

So yeah, it’s hard to say if the trip was what I expected or not because I really had no expectations-- other than getting in the ocean at least once and getting kind of tan. I’ll relay what I saw in little snippets, but here’s a video that pretty much sums up the entire week in a little less than 15 minutes. There’s a story behind every shot, and while I probably won’t get to all of them I’ll try to pick out the highlights. 

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