!Hola from Machala!

So as everyone has reminded me, it has been far too long since we have updated the blog. My apologies to all of our readers. So the group has left Quito, we moved on to Guayaquil to pick up Joyt and Shana, and then continued on to our first province of research, El Oro.

Guayaquil was beautiful and I cannot wait to return this next week. For those of you who don't know, Guayaquil is the second largest city in Ecuador, largest being the capital Quito. Guayaquil is located in the coastal province Guayas which is north of El Oro. The drive from Quito to Guayaquil was long and when I say long I mean about 9 hours. Though long, it was absolutely breathtaking seeing as we took a descent from out of the mountains of Quito to about sea level in Guayaquil. We drove along a narrow, bumpy road down the side of various mountains and through many rural villages. It was incredible and I could not stop taking pictures. Also, Acacia and Miriam had a lot of fun entertaining us with the microphone on the tour bus that will be transporting all 15 of us around the country for the next month.

This was written by Ben approximately one week ago....more recent updates to come very soon!