This email is coming to you from the Panama International Airport, where we are waiting for our flight back to Colorado. So far travels have been smooth, except for Copa Airlines not telling us we couldn’t use a digital boarding pass (after waiting in the boarding line). Strange.
Here’s what I’ve found fun, interesting, or noteworthy this week…
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Things I learned from traveling to Ecuador –
The people are very nice, work HARD, and are looking to be helpful. We met so many awesome people that were genuine amazing people that we will keep in touch with and call friends long after this trip.
There is an opportunity for us to give to very nice people that don’t have a lot of money, but will work really hard. We met kids that were hiking up incredibly steep hills/mountains to manage crops, and we’re told that they probably only have access to one computer in their whole school. I will be looking for ways to help them out and will keep you posted.
Ecuador is INCREDIBLY beautiful!!! Holy wowza!! The steep green hills, and massive mountains of Ecuador make the US seem small and dull! I would not joke with you, it’s incredible! Not to mention they use US dollars and you can get about twice as much for your dollar in Ecuador. Win, win, win!
If you aren’t falling, you aren’t learning. This is a Chuck Kramer’ism that we’ve lived by for some time, but it thrust itself into our lives big time during the mountain biking in Ecuador. The rides were so steep and the trails so raw that we all had at least one tumble on most days. I will say that it would have been nice to have our own bikes, but that didn’t take from the fact that there are just some really hard (amazingly beautiful) mountain bike trails in Ecuador!
Tool that I will always travel with from now on –
A very well closing shaker bottle (Amazon)! We didn’t bring one on our trip to Ecuador, but found one to buy at a local grocery store. Thank goodness!
Without a shaker bottle you are limited to mixing up your protein shakes and amino acids in a water bottle or small glass. This is a mess waiting to happen. Or actually happening in my case.
Like I mentioned last week… we bring a lot of protein powder with us. Not only because most people (especially women and people above 50) are deficient in protein, but eating protein before a heavy carb meal will decrease the chance of the carbs being stored as fat. So, when you’re traveling and don’t know what you’ll be fed, you can sneak a protein shake in and set yourself up for success.
For example, the pre set breakfasts that we had in Ecuador all started with fruit and fruit juices. Now, I won’t touch fruit juice with a 10 foot pole unless I’m about to workout, or have just worked out. BUT gulping down a protein shake before eating some fruit is a GREAT way to slow down that fruit sugar from hitting your blood stream with a vengeance! #protip
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These were a couple of longer noteworthy thoughts this week, so I’ll leave it right there. But if you need anything at all… you know where to find me! 😉
Cheers!
Joe
