Overload, in a great way

I have been to the rainforest and the Andes and back! Oh my goodness, I don´t even know where to begin, there is so much to tell. So much to explain, and I´m not sure how. I know I´m pulling a Dante and saying that there aren´t words to describe everything that happened and I´m going to just go ahead and tell you all anyway. First off, the rainforest, or more properly the tropical moist forest. Moist. All the time. Everything. The plants, the animals, the ground, the buildings, your clothes, your self. Everything. There is no way to get dry. But that is just fine! It was amazing. It was everything I had imagined and more. The levels of complexity just boggle the mind. The interaction of climate, plants, animals, and people is just incredible. I can´t say everything here, I will give you a few bullet points just so you can get an intro to my experience. The trip there was rugged. And this is coming from someone who knows the meaning of roughing it. We rode down Via Auca in a ranchero, an open bus, made of wood, with no suspension on a road that was a cross between cobble stone and gravel with pot holes all along it. But it was fun in a way. Seeing the progression of the rainforest, from significant human impact to less and less was fascinating. Moving along, here´s a short list of somethings I did. I ate ants. Not just one, several. One type was minty, another was slightly lemony, and another was strongly lemony. It was kind of cool actually! Our guide just licked them off a branch, handed the branch to us, and we did the same! I also had some sapote, a type of wild fruit. I saw monkeys, common woolly monkeys, night monkeys, it was so much fun to watch them swinging through the branches, wrestling, calling to each other. The diversity of animals was overwhelming. If I hadn´t written anything down I wouldn´t have remembered anything. We took many hikes, morning, afternoon, evening. Canoe rides to see birds or watch caimans. So cool! Piranha fishing, unfortunately I didn´t catch anything. P.S. You use raw meat as bait, we chose pork. I tried shooting a blow gun dart when we were at a Huaorani village. Two of our guides were Huaorani and it was so great that we got to get to know them better and understand their culture. The way they live with and depend on the forest is amazing. I know I use that word a lot but everything was amazing. I will have much more to tell later after I have had time to process it all. After the tropical moist forest, we went to the Andes. I never thought I would feel altitude the way I did when we hiked to the top of a peak that is higher than any mountain in the Rocky Mountain chain. My head was heavy and light at the same time, it was so odd. But it was breath taking to see the view from the top. The mountains, the clouds, and the odd plants that are part of the paramo ecosystem, think boggy but on a mountain, were all incredible. We worked our way down, hopping on an off our bus, which was much more comfortable than the ranchero, taking numerous hikes at different elevations. Then we went to the thermal baths at Papallacta. Ahh. So nice. Relaxing in warm to hot water after all our hikes was excellent. And then today, we had a morning hike in the a montane forest, I swear, I felt like Gollum hiking through between and undert the gnarled trees. The landscape looked straight out of Lord of the Rings. But muddier. And tropical. But you can envision that until I get to show you my pictures. Tomorrow, we go to the Galapagos! I am so excited for it. We are hiking and snorkeling every day. It should be so interesting and so much fun. I have left out so many details about what I have done so far, and there are so many stories I have yet to tell. I look forward to sharing more with you all later!