Type 2 fun - what doesnt kill you makes you stronger

So theres some funky stuff going on with the formatting and i couldn't move pictures to their appropriate place in the text and there some spacing issues too...its all there, just not in logical order.

Cayambe...amazing!

Breakfast, one bite of biscuit 3 sips of tea, repeat
Where all the action happened

Laundry and Dishes

Beautiful area

Piggy Piggy Piggy

Cuerco

Beauty

Kitchen...we had meat, but no fridge, i didn't ask

The eating room, left with the flag-for-a-door is my room, foward and left is the parents and boys room, forward and right is the kitchen, right but not in the picture is the girls room. out that door is the bathroom

My Bedroom...quite enjoyable minus the 3 inch spiders

Backyard

These mangey guys HATED me...and most everyone else

Chicks

Intag Valley

The Intag Valley

Where's a good shoulder when you need one

Big and Scary

A nice little cascade on our guided walk

Flowers

Vaca

G Pigs, unfortunately i didn't get to taste them

Back Yard

Rita, in all her might
Working the pineapple crop, Pucara

Beautiful sunset in Pucara, this place was gorgeous

My homestay house in Pucara

Gringo Chris tries to save the day but really fucks this one up!

Sunset over Otavalo from roof of my hostel

Lake in the crater of Fuya Fuya

Lake waters had risen making this eire site

Lake in the middle of Fuya Fuya

Market in Otavalo

Pablo's Dad's go cart we took out for its test run...holy shit was this thing fun!

Cute, but unfortunately this guy was a tourist trap

There has been a growing trend amond us recognizing that simply calling something ¨fun¨doesn´t really capture the full extent of the experience. Out of this has come a ranking order of different types of fun to better convey the experience. I personally think it has gotten a bit out of control now, with some people claiming there are actually 4 or 5 types of fun, when it truth the movement really started with just 2 types. I think, most likely, while someone was having a bit too much type 2 fun they came up with the other types...Anyways,

Here´s the general lay out and examples to boot:

Middle of the World

Types of fun...
Type 1 fun: Fun while you´re doing it, fun afterwards. This is the standard fun we are all familiar with.
Type 2 fun: Not fun while you are doing it, but fun to remeniss about it afterwards. For example, running marathons, child birth, must run class 5+ sieved out walled in gorges.
Type 3 fun: Fun while you're doing it, not fun afterwards. Epic nights out on the piss. STDs.
Type 4 fun: NOT FUN ever. Dislocating shoulders, falling off cliffs, etc.

So i laid all of this out because i have seem to be finding toooons of type 2 fun down here, some of it is even boardering on type 4 fun...or not fun at all. Let the shit show begin.

I left off last time delayed by a day getting into the small village where i would be attending spansish school for 2 weeks and doing a homestay with a local fam. Things finally got kicked off and we made our way out into the boon docs, but not first without stopping for some necessary errands. This included collecting seeds off a highland tree to replant for a refroestation project.

The trees we found fruiting were right next to a 2 inch diameter water pipe that was bringing water from a high elevation lake down to a community or farm. It was leaking. Gringo Chris, fresh out of hydrology school, determined he could assist with the leak...Gring Chris really fucked this one up...upon "adjusting" the pipe i failed to realize the 300 feet of head (LOTS OF PRESSURE) was going to do its best to break free, and break free it did. My adjustment ended up catastrophically destroying the pipe and sending a wall of spray in a 30 foot radius...OOOPS. I got out of there quick and we notified the locals of a "leaky situation".

Next came my 2nd fatal mistake of the day...Salsa. Fresh Salsa that is. Ohhhh so delicious, oh so deadly. I added it to my rice during my pan-friend trout lunch and it made the food spectactular. 6 hours later though something was churning in my gut and it ended up being a 6 day affair with the toilet. I wont spare you any details.

So Ill paraphrase the 2 weeks (well 10 days, i bowed out early).

I arived, everything seemed chummy. I was expecting a low level housing situation and thats exactly what i got - no biggy. Seven of us in a a house a bit bigger than my attic bedroom. Cubical sytle walls that didn't reach te ceiling (there was no ceiling, just a roof). 2 younger boys, 9 and 11, two teenie girls, 14 and 16, the folks, 3 dogs, and 2 cats in the house! Tight. Outside, 25 guinea pig, 20 chickens, 3 pigs and a loooot of mud.

I got sick on night one and had to use the bathroom 25 times in less than 3 days. I shat myself on morning 3 while eating breakfast with the family at the table...ooops. that was awkward, and that was definitely not a fart. The family was hard to talk to, did not engage in conversation, but insisted on sitting with me at the table while i ate (regardless of if they were eating or not) they also liked to stare at me without talking - slightly awkward.

I ran a temp well into the triple digits, i was shaking and had the cold sweats for 2 days, my resting heart rate doubled to above 100 bpm...i wasn't doing so hot. The mother, however, thought it was just the sun, despite me trying to tell her otherwise, and despite having no appetite whatsoever, i was being fed 3 meals a day. Breakfast was death by biscuit - week old dry bread rolls that could be used as grenades and would easily break double pane glass if thrown with anything more than a toss (i received 2-3 of these daily, 1-2 of them got hidden in my pockets when no one was looking and later fed to the dogs, god they were hard to eat). Lunch was death by Hot Starch. A bowl of potato rice pasta soup with a large plate of rice with potatoes, pasta, and sometimes beans and sometimes a piece of fried meat (they had no fridge though and i never did figure out where the meat was kept) and dinner was soup again. The meals were the same, 10 days straight, and once my appetite was back i quite enjoyed it, but for 5 days the mother put huge portions in front of me and watched as i forced every spoonful down my gullet. With a temp, the chills and the shits, this was no small feat - on more than one occasion i threw up in my mouth and chewed it back down infront of her- type 2 fun.

Bedtime was 7:30-8:00, mornings started at 4:30 to 5.

They boiled the water for me to drink but something was still funky with it. On inspecting my day old water in my water bottle i noticed that after being shaken the bubbles did not rise to the surface, they remained suspended in the liquid for many minutes that that crazy drink back in the day with the suspended orbs- i call it liquid and not water because obviously this doesn't happen in water.

Spanish lessons were great. i learned tons, learned not to care as much about sucking and have more material to process than i covered in 4 years of spanish in highschool. That was a huge plus.

For 5 days there was a swiss couple also staying in the village, we became instant friends and swapped stories. They stayed with the regional cock-fighting champion and were given lessons on how to train your cock to win. Apparently placing it on a string, putting a weight around one of its ankles and then swaying the string helps build leg muscles and strength...he won 30 dollars at the weekends cock fight - a full weeks wage. not bad money.

We also partook in the weekly sugar cane processing, where they press the cane, boil down the syrup and make sugar...after boiling down the syrup for 6 hours they pour out the cramel like concoction onto sheets and then fold it over and over as it cools which folds air into it and makes it granual. At just the right moment they grab all the sugar and build a giant 10 inch sugar cock with it that sits erect on the table. After standing there and watching all of this we (me and the swiss) voted one of the guys as the sugar cock master after he erected 7 sugar cocks in 20 minutes...quite the feat, unfortunately i dont have pictures.

We took a guided tour down to one of the rivers and were very surprised to see that our guides were a 16 year old guy and two 14 year old girls...aftr much suspicsion we all had a fantastic day, especially when they realized we were pretty laid back and didn't care about much, including their guiding skills...a good day out though and it landed us in the town over during market day.

I also spent some time working a pineapple crop on the local organic eco farm...hard work and i didn't last long especially since i was still sick while trying to work and the sun down here is something brutal...heat stroke, fever, shits, and the chills dont go well with death by Hot Starch for lunch.

After 10 days i booked it out of there and i am off to the coast to team up with other Team Extreme member Emma P. Ought to be a good one and will report back with next adventures.