My days here in Ecuador are so vastly different than my day to day back in Charleston. My days usually started at 5am from a rooster call (which was annoying at first… but honestly, I kind of enjoy it now) with a fresh fruit breakfast and amazing coffee. When then go on some sort of excursion or hike looking for birds, monkeys, or caymans, depending on the day. Something I have struggled to adjust to with these hikes is the altitude! Hiking is much different at 9,000+ feet above sea level than around flat, 0 feet above sea level Charleston, but I enjoy every minute of it. Then we normally come back and do some water chemical analyses before lunch. During these analyses, we examine ‘bio bags’ which were filled the day before and left to incubate to find evidence of E. coli or other coliforms. We also test for pH, conductivity, turbidity, nitrate, nitrite, phosphorus, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity, and hardness from our samples. After lunch, we will have a little free time to explore until our afternoon activity. Sometimes these are cultural experiences, such as hanging out in a remote village and learning about their education system, or sometimes the afternoon excursions include fishing, ziplining, tours, soccer games, or really anything! At some point during the day, new water samples will be taken for the following day’s chemical analysis. Once we get back to where we are staying, we will usually head to dinner which was always delicious! My favorite part of the day were the nights we had night hikes in the jungle after we ate. We saw the coolest species during this time; tarantulas, tree frogs, grasshoppers the size of my foot, other spiders, and cool trees. The days are long, but they are so much fun! The photos are from a hike to the ‘Pailon del Diablo’ waterfall and some of our bio bags showing results!