The Jungle

This weekend we went to the ¨El Chapare¨ this is the jungle that is right over the mountain. When I say right over the mountain I mean a very long four hours crammed in the back of a van over some paved, some cobblestone, and some dirt roads. We finally did make it to our destination. Our group contained about nine other students three from switzerland, one from Austria named Daniel who is my new friend, four from america (us and ,new girl, jessica). We arrived all very hot and tired from the long trufi (van) ride. It is truely the jungle in the sense that it super hot and amzingly humid. We immediatly got on our hiking stuff which consisted of long pants, long sleeve shirts and high socks to go over our pants. We went on a hike in the dark and did not see any animals but did get to see a site in which there was on old cocaine factor so that was pretty cool and made you realize how real the problem of drug trafficing in the jungles really was. We had a good rest of the night which included some awesome food. The next morning we arose to the sound of the roster crowing at six AM!!! Though we tried to continue to sleep most everyone was up at 730. We then headed the national park in which we went to three different caves and saw lots of bats and a bird native and very important to the jungle. It´s importance lies in the fact that it was good at helping the forst populate because it ate seeds and then threw them back up, after being thrown back up the seeds were germinated and could grow. Our guide stressed this point many times throughout the three hour hike. We made it back to the vans and headed to a river where we ate lunch and swam but then of course were promptly rained on; however, the water did feel awesome. We made it back to the house where we enjoyed another awesome dinner and four games of spoons (we did teach it to everyone...in spanish which was difficult) in which I won the first three and Dee won the last was so you could say we cleaned up. We then decided we all needed to go have some fun after a long day of hiking we went to the nearest discotecha (a club) and danced the night away which was a lot of fun as well. Sunday we went to another river and swam and this is were I made my second friend. The people who watch over the house while the owners (the same people that run the language school) arent there have a eight yearold son named Joel. Once everyone was out of the river Joel and I decided we werent quite ready to leave so played in the river having sword fights and throwing rocks for another thirty minutes. When we got back to the house Joel and played soccer for many hours until we left. He is a great kid and am happy to have him as my second friend. We arrived ¨home¨ in which our adopted mother (Cira) had dinner waiting on us. Today we had class and we all felt we are making good progress though we are always tired it seems. Tomorow is going to be an extremely long day in which we have eight hours of spanish due to us missing some hours for the trip. Overall we are still having a great time and dont see this changing any time soon.