Playing in the Mud

Up about 7:30, all of us (me, Lisa, Jason and Kieran) went for breakfast, then Jason needed to mail his Panama hat he bought, went to the supermarket for hiking food, dropped off laundry, withdrew some money at an ATM, converted some of it to soles (the currency in Peru). Wé'll need some when we go across the border at some small town in the middle of nowhere. We plan on not using one of the popular border crossings.About noon, me, Lisa and Jason got a taxi to Parque Nacional Podocarpus. It was raining when we started and the trail was super wet and muddy. Super nice vegetation, trees, shrubs and everything is green. At the top, it was rainy, misty and cloudy and couldn't see any views. It was a massively hard climb, we were literally climbing vertically in some parts. We actually thought we were lost, Lisa and me were going to turn around after three hours and go back because the trail was neverending up. Jason said "let's just go up this one last hill and see". Which we did. Lo-and-behold, that was the top (the paramo),a nd the trail finally started descending. On the way down, it stopped raining and clouds started to clear and we got some views.We finished hiking around 4:30, and went back to the ranger station, covered in mud. A truck came up, it was the ranger park woman. The taxi driver didn't stop at the main gate for us to pay our park fee ($10) when we came in, so when she found us, she asked us to pay. She then offered us a ride back to Loja, which was awesome, because we would have had to walk 8km to the main highway before flagging down a bus, taking probably 2+ hours extra.We rode back to town in the back of the pick-up, and got dropped off in central Loja, close to our hostal.We picked up our laundry, then back to the hostal and showered. Another girl (Deedee, from Holland) came into our room and asked us if it was safe to walk around Loja at night. We said ya, we thought so, and then invited her to join us for supper, as she was travelling alone. She would meet us back at our room at 7:30 this evening.At 7:30, we went to Parrillada Uruguay for supper. Awesome food!! I don't know if it's authentic Uruguain food, but my steak was superb.At supper, Deedee mentioned that Friday is a holiday, and most bus companies weren't going to be running busses. We had planned on heading to Peru that day. We decided when we got to the bus terminal tomorrow, we would inquire.After supper, we went for ice cream, then to bed after 10:00.One other note, yesterday on the bus, Lisa taught me how to conjugate verbs! I'm getting more smarter!