¡Viva Ecuador! A La Aventura!
Trip Start
Nov 24, 2007
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Trip End
May 15, 2008
Quito,
Ecuador
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
For those of you who don´t know, after graduating from the University of Oregon (Go Ducks) last June, Maya and I spent the next five months living and busting our arses in Enterprise, Oregon for the USFS as wildland firefighters. Not only was it an excellent job (paid to work outside all day) but it was an abnormally hot and dry summer and we got to see a lot of action. No it may not have been the most glamorous of jobs one would choose as a post college occupation or a common one at that, but we enjoyed it thoroughly and barring any huge changes we likely will be returning next June. Truth be told, there just aren't many jobs out there that you can do seasonally like fighting fire (especially in a place as beautiful as Wallowa County) and earn enough money to subsidize a trip like this
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. I am pretty impressed with Maya for sticking it out so strongly in a workplace dominated by so many alpha-males! Myself included at times! Metaphorically, on more than one occasion (off of the fire line that is) she had to fight fire with fire... standing up to quell sexist remarks of course (note: this pertains less to non-Enterprise folks and more to off forest folks). Quite easy to foretell from the beginning, knowing her, she proved a lot of people wrong. I guess in a way it was just preparation for the Latin machismo complex that awaits her! So anyway, to those who think you have to be wealthy to travel to far off places or receive a huge handout from your parents to make ends meet, we are your inspiration. You don't have to sacrifice your career endeavors and with a little planning, sacrifice and due diligence it can be done easily. So go. Don't wait and do not look back.
From now until May 15th, we will be mostly traveling overland through Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and into Costa Rica for our flight home. Nothing however is set in stone. This is more like the rudimentary plan. The what, when, where and how are still entirely left open for change as we go. Uncertainty is part of the fun. With that, what we DO know is that instead of tripping across the entire continent of South America in a meager six months, we've narrowed it down to a region so that we have more time to see things and less ground to cover in order to do so
Natural Enough For A Newborn
. The main reason for heading north. The last thing we wanted to do was become overzealous and start skipping from one famous tourist attraction to another, spending hours and hours in a bus. Our intent is to experience more of what each unique country has to offer more intimately than what we would do coming for only a brief amount of time. Quality over Quantity. Always. We surely want to take things slow, absorb and give back as much as we can, do some unforgettable things together along the way and most of all travel, explore and be free for a change. Since we both have spent a combined time of more than a 14 months in Spanish speaking countries and have spent time studying it a great deal already, we are looking forward to comfortably being back in a familiar but at the same time, new and exciting 'terra incognita'! We hope that you can keep tabs on us and enjoy our adventure along the way...
