Well, we finally made it to Shell yesterday. It was an amazing bus trip down through Ecuador for five hours. After a wonderful breakfast of pancakes, sausages, and this amazing juice {whose name has now escaped me} All I know is that I had never heard of the fruit before, it tasted a lot like pear juice and it was wonderful….. So anyways, after breakfast we packed up our stuff in the morning and left the Guest House at about 10am. We began our trek in our 14 passenger van which contained twelve people and about ten tons of luggage for all of us. Who could have ever thought that you could possibly need that much stuff in only ten days…It was all the girls stuff, I am sure J….
So we drove for a bit then stopped for lunch in the city of Banos. {This can also be translated bath, not restroom as most of you are thinking} Basically they have a lot of hot springs in the area is why it is called that. This city is very close to the volcano of Tunteragua, which is the volcano that is currently spewing ash and lava all over the place. We actually got very close to the base of Tunteragua on our way down, but we were on the upwind side of it, so there was no molten lava coming at us.
This is a picture of a famous statue very close to the base of Mount Tunteragua. There WERE two parrots before, but the ash and rock falling down actually broke off the second parrot from the tree. And below the tree, we can see all the lava rock and ash...
We did however see a lot of the damage that it had done earlier. Many parts of the road had been washed away and bridges completely demolished. Below is a picture of a lava riverbed that was created during the eruption...
And there was lava rock everywhere. I even got a souvenir rock to bring home with me. J It was amazing at how quickly the local authorities had fixed the road. The road that we drove on had been fixed in multiple places and the volcano only just started erupting last week or so. But I am told it happens quite frequently in this area, so they are used to it. So after stopping for lunch, we continued on our journey, and the landscape continued to get more and more lush and green. I knew the jungle was coming near.
We eventually began to see many waterfalls and tons and gorgeous mountainsides around us completely covered in dense vegetation. We then stopped at one waterfall of which we had to cross a gorge to get to. We traversed this gigantic crevasse with the help of a zip line/gondola. It was pretty epic. I didn’t let myself think about how rickety it was, I just jumped in and soon we were rushing down the line about 500 or so feet above the river far below.
It made for a wonderful photo op {btw there are many, many more pictures on my facebook page in my photo album.} Our next stop was at another waterfall. This one you had to hike a little ways to get to. We hiked down an awesome jungle trail, where you had vines and trees hanging over you all over the place and everything was humid and dripping.
We finally made it to the falls where you could climb a staircase to get alongside it and they even had made a cave where you could crawl on your hands and knees until you got to a little alcove that was directly underneath the top of the waterfall. Then you could look out at the pounding water roar over your head and smash the rocks far below. The thunder of the water was deafening.
For me, as I stood there getting soaked, I couldn’t help but feel the power of the Almighty God of the Universe. To think that he spoke this waterfall into being with just the word of his mouth is just awe-inspiring. And then to look out at the beautiful Ecuaodrian mountains and valleys, I was overwhelmed with the creativity and magnificence of the greatest artist of all time. Whenever someone tries to tell me that art is a secular and worldly thing, I will point them to the country of Ecuador and say, I think God cares a lot about art and creativity.
After trekking back from the waterfall, we then all piled back into the van and continued the rest of our journey down into Shell. We finally made it around 6pm. We are staying at a local hostel in the area and tonight we went out to get some Ecuadorian Chinese food. {which was ok…I still like REAL Chinese better}
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. I guess I didn’t really know what to expect coming down to Ecuador. I mean, I knew it was going to be crazy, awesome, adventurous, and God-filled, because that’s what a mission trip is all about, but I mean, I have been challenged a lot lately with things that I had never thought about before. I feel like God is really working in me right now, and I don’t really know where He’s taking me with it. So I guess I’m just gonna go with it, and see the awesome plan He’s got waiting for me… I feel like the time we are going to have talking with the individual missionary families and talking with them will really answer a lot of the questions that I have been thinking about lately. Tomorrow the plan is to take two Cessna 206’s and fly into the jungle and land at one of their airstrips and tour around the area. Not exactly what we are going to do, but Brian said to pack shoes that we can get REALLY muddy and wet….sound like fun. And I also heard that all the caterpillars are poisonous here…better keep an eye out for em… J
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