Chautauqua 2015: An FI Haven in Ecuador

Wow. What a week! I’m not sure how mere words can cap­ture how incred­i­ble the week was, but I’m going to give it a shot!

First, let’s talk about the sur­round­ings. Ecuador is a gor­geous coun­try full of fas­ci­nat­ing things to see around every turn (and in the moun­tains, there’s a LOT of turns to be made). We saw every­thing from a vol­cano erupt­ing to tou­cans and par­rots fly­ing past us in the rain­for­est. Our first night we stayed in Quito at a very quaint hotel near the air­port. Once every­one arrived, we packed up and head­ed to El Encan­to Hos­te­ria in Los Ban­cos, which was about 90 min­utes away. The hos­te­ria is nes­tled into the hill­side of the Rio Ban­cos val­ley and offered some of the most breath­tak­ing scenery I’ve ever seen. You can hear the riv­er rush­ing through the bot­tom of the val­ley if the birds aren’t being too noisy. We were up high enough we could see the clouds being cre­at­ed below us, and often­times around us as well.

One unique aspect of El Encan­to is the Equa­tor runs direct­ly through it. This led to activ­i­ties such as doing sun salu­ta­tions on the equa­tor, find­ing our bod­ies’ ener­gy lev­el or even just sim­ply get­ting enjoy a cold juice in both hemip­sh­eres at the same time. The ser­vice was impec­ca­ble if you did­n’t care about cof­fee first thing in the morn­ing, and real­ly good if you are addict­ed to the “café”. They did a great job of tak­ing care of us through the week.

 

 

We had a num­ber of dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties avail­able for us to do. I got to hang out on the equa­tor (both at the hos­te­ria and in Quito), go ziplin­ing through the canopy of the rain­for­est, vol­un­teer with a refor­esta­tion group, tour a real life choco­late fac­to­ry, expe­ri­ence a native Ecuado­ri­an shaman cleans­ing and more! Oth­ers in the group got to go white water raft­ing, repel down a cliff face through a water­fall and spend an ear­ly morn­ing out bird­ing with a local expert.

 

 

The one best part, in my opin­ion, was­n’t the fresh­ly squeezed juice or the beau­ti­ful vis­tas. They were a very nice bonus, but we could’ve been holed up in a con­ven­tion cen­ter in Alber­ta for all I cared. No, the best part was the incred­i­ble group of peo­ple on the trip. It was laugh­ing at each oth­er as we got dirty plant water poured over our heads at 6 am, or the com­raderie of dip­ping our toes in the tepid hot tub while drink­ing our way through numer­ous bot­tles of wine. It was the sup­port and encour­age­ment from peo­ple who were try­ing to do the same thing you are. A group of com­plete strangers came togeth­er for a week and left as a big fam­i­ly. I might have trav­eled by myself on the way down to Ecuador, but on the way home I was part of one of the best groups of peo­ple I could’ve asked for. The advice I received on this trip (whether it was some­thing I asked for or not :p) will help me years down the road.

To every­one read­ing this, if you get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to go on a Chau­tauqua with Cheryl, DO IT. I sin­cere­ly believe this was not only the best week I’ve ever had in my life, but one of the most use­ful. Every pen­ny I paid for this trip (even the $10 I spent on alco­hol that I left on the bus) was absolute­ly worth it.

For those read­ing this that were a part of the trip: Thank you. You are a won­der­ful group of peo­ple and I am for­ev­er changed because of your company.

 

Because I don’t want to leave this post on such a sen­ti­men­tal sap­py note, I’ll end it with a list of my favorite quotes and say­ings from the week. In no par­tic­u­lar order, here they are:
‑Both halves of Barack Obama
‑get­ting attacked by a weedwhacker
‑cer­e­mo­ni­al loogies
‑risk­ing flesh-eat­ing disease
‑hav­ing safe­ty meetings