Our week in Arequipa sold us on Peru pretty easily. Aside from Jimmy, Ryan and TJ, whose inconvenient location necessitated a 45-minute commute to and from the Spanish school, the majority of us took a quick liking to the new country – 5000-meter snow-covered warts and all. This was especially good news because our next week was libre: We had six days to plan and follow our own schedule, operating… Read More

We left the Intag Watershed with a pretty simple itenerary: Head back to Quito, check into Community Hostel, hit the laundromat, eat ludicrous amounts of brownies, and fall asleep watching movies on the wall projector. Community is an exceptionally comfortable hostel with delicious meals, friendly (English-speaking) staff, and a welcoming vibe. It was the first place we stayed after arriving in Ecuador back in September, and most of the group… Read More

“Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.” -Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj On November 8th, the Sacred Valley, near Cusco, greeted us with an overcast sky, a calm river, and enormous, cultivated mountains on… Read More

( Adapted from personal blog – http://www.jackdubreuil.blogspot.com ) The Ecuadorian villiage of Pucará is a solid candidate for the title of World’s Most Unassuming Place. It’s a humble little town, small in every sense, with modest buildings dwarfed even further by the Andean monoliths that pierce the horizon in every direction. The center square, complete with a small church, two stores, and a volleyball court, branches out into a few… Read More

We spent four days of last week in the Ecuadorian Amazon, 30 bumpy minutes outside of the city of Tena, learning how much life can improve when you’re half an hour from the nearest power outlet and surrounded by deet-hungry mosquitoes. Special thanks to my anti-malarial tablets for making this awesome stay possible. We bunked down in a ridiculously cool two-story shack that our backpacker-friendly host family had constructed in… Read More

( Adapted from personal blog, http://jackdubreuil.blogspot.com/ ) It´s almost a challenge to describe the Ecuadorian town of Baños without sounding like a travel brochure. The place has everything a tourist (or a roving band of student-volunteers) could wish for: a friendly atmosphere, fantastic food, plenty of nightlife, and a picturesque mountain range, which rises up majestically on every side and boasts something like 65 waterfalls. The outdoor scene, as you… Read More

Adapted from personal blog: http://jackdubreuil.blogspot.com/ We spent our last week in the Ecuadorian town of Las Delicias. That is, if you can really call Las Delicias a town. To the uncultured American observer, Las Delicias is an altogether unfamiliar type of establishment. It´s a semi-official conglomerate of farms and residences, clumped loosely around a couple of stores and a homely futbol court. A quick Google search doesn´t turn up anything… Read More