Finally!

I´m here! Finlly! After a nice flight down with Amy that included a stop in Atlanta, a man with our names on a sign to give us a ride in Quito (Ben I´m still looking for that perfect doggie gift) and a stay in a way too nice hotel in Quito, a mix up with an electronic ticket the next day, I finally made it! Cuenca is an amazing city, though in reality it´s not too much different than american cities. The similarities outnumber the differences from what I´ve seen so far. I´m living, for the next week at least, in a very sparcly furnihed, but very very nice house on the outskirts of the city. This is our sort of home base when we aren´t in the Reserve living in tents or the research station. We had a great dinner of burritos with an appetizer of fried plaitines and guacamole. There was a fun game of egyptian rat screw in there as well. We then went out and I had the minty-est hot chocolate ever. But it got pretty late and we went back to the house, our cabbie almost hitting a dog on the way home. Today we explored the city more going multiple markets and generally attemtping to soak it all in. It really is amazing. We went to the ¨new¨ cathedral which was enourmous. I didn´t take any pictures today but there will be ore to come. We ate in a wonderful Colombian resturant and I had a great dish of beans chicken and beef on a corn tortilla type thing. I´ll try to bring my journal to write what it´s called because I can´t remember for the life of me.
So we´ll be in Cuenca untill Thursday. exploring and getting some lectures and more guideline type stuff then it´s the 2.5-3 hour drive up into the reserve to begin our field work. I´ll for sure be in touch before I leave and I´ll try tp get some pictures up as well. So I think that´s it for now. Sorry I don´t have time to wrtie more or email all of you, but I´ll try agin later. Caio.