feliz navidad

cool graffiti


feeling kinda homesick as its christmastime and everyone is fuhreeking out about snow in seattle. well we finally left the beach and now live on a farm with a handful of people from various countries, all hooligans. there isnt electricity on the farm, which calls for many romantic candlelight situations. today we made the trek to come to this town for internet. we arent really working on the farm since its christmas week, so we spend our days tinkering around. i visited the school and got them christmas presents with the generous money certain individuals gave me, and i will send them a more detailed message about that later. im eating the healthiest ever, since this farm is oragnic and it tends to draw vegan, glutten free, etc people who also tend to be above average in cooking, singing, drawing, and giving massages


we stayed in someones house in vilcabamba while lost trying to get to the farm. they had a feather taped to the wall for decoration

the finnish people built a makeshift sauna. its a hole in the ground with a tarp and blanket over it. here paulos is shoveling hot rocks in. he made us jump in the freezing river after

loja, ecuador

spent the last week on the beach in montañita, lay-Z days. finished reading The History of Love, i liked the details much more than the plot. no one in montañita really wears shoes, theres more dredies than you can shake a stick at, and most people make jewlery for a living but will trade it with you for beer. clam ironically doesnt like seafood but then became obsessed with shrimp and ate it for breakfast lunch and dinner. we stayed in a hostal above a bar that blasts techno into your ear all night long, recommended to us by a guy who says he´s a doctor ¨just not in the U.S.¨ and has a tattoo of a naked lady dancing on his arm. we were checking out when clam´s best friend from fourth grade came up and tapped him on the shoulder, so we ended up staying longer. now we´re in loja about to go work on a farm called never neverland, which is a malaria area so we´ve been hoarding as much malarone as possible but the stash is running low. lots of stories, about crazy diseases like japanese monkey virus or friends of friends of friends who were robbed at gunpoint on their way to burger king at 4 in the afternoon.

january 17th i return!

i officially have an official date of my return, january 17th, which means i will not be home for christmas which could be sad. especially since i just watched this movie with matthew broderick and danny devito about the importance of being with your family on christmas. then again, that was the lamest movie ever featuring lines like ¨come here you little fart!¨ and ï´m the christmas guy around here¨ and people randomly breaking into song. ANYWAY clam and i are all by our lonesome now. we left quito yesterday, took a bus all night to salinas, ran into the ocean in salinas, and then got on another bus to montañita where i am typing this. montañita is a very very cute little surf town with lots of people who think theyre really cool and might actually be. quito was more like a lot of white people wearing crocs, prolly becuase we were in the part called gringo town. uhhhh before that we were in the GALOPS! as in, the galopagos. amazing. incredible. spectacular. i snorkled every single day and got seasick every single day and saw gigantic sea turtles and gigantic 200 hundred year old land tortoises that breathe like this HHHHHOOOOOOOOOO AAAAAAAHHHHHHH. i also saw a pack of eagle rays, which i mistook for the much more dangerous pack of sting rays. also, as i was showering in the bathroom of my cabin boat, an unusually traumatic thing happened. i turned off the shower and turned to open the door, when the door handle fell off. so im standing in the tiny boat bathroom the size of me, completly naked, heaving myself against the door pounding and screaming help in all kinds of languages. i pride myself in not being a clausterphobe but everything began to close in on me as i realized i was right next to the engine so no one would hear me or find me for hours. then luckily someone heard me and got the boats mechanic, who worked on the lock for a couple minutes and then quickly ran away because i was naked.
we were in the galops at the time in the year where all the baby sea lions were born like a week ago so it was the cutest thing ever. on one of the islands you leave a postcard/letter/message/note in a barrel, and you look through all the other messages for an address that is near you and you hand deliver it. i sent a few out and took a few to deliver.

drip castles

SHARKS

we had the boat to ourselves

place to drop off letters

babbbbyyyyy

yes i took this i thank you. national geographic is waiting

other volunteers

me clinging to the ladder at the top of a 150 foot bird watching station

i am kate in an episode of lost, this is jacob´s cabin

william, the forest ranger we followed on his walks through the amazon

crater lake at top of volcano

a giant snowglobe. i tried to buy it but it turns out its from america, a special decoration for a furniture store.

hip tourists flock to machu picchu at 4 AM

the bottom of my walking stick