Kate's Ecuador Adventure: House up a Tree and Me under the sea

Today I went up into the highlands to El Progresso with Katie, Maureen, and Gabi. We went to El Ceibo, which is actually a giant tree with a house built in it. The guy who built it showed us around. There's a pole you can slide down from the house to the ground, a rope swing, a giant tire swing, a cave beneath the tree with a bed in it, and a place where you can climb up the tree. It was a lot of fun. We also had coffee and delicious banana bread while we were there.
Then, we walked around the town. There isn't much to do there, especially on Saturdays when apparently all the restaurants are closed. Oops. We walked up to see the first residence on the island, which was part of Manuel Cobo's plantation on the island and now pretty much consists of two stones walls and some stairs (not attached to the walls). It was interesting and the view was fantastic. We could see Floreana and Santa Cruz from the top.

This week has been mostly working and studying (we had another exam Friday :( so there isn't much else to tell. Although, we did finally get to go scuba diving on Thursday. We went with the class and they gave us a very cheap rate, which was great. We first dove at the mouths of the bays where we snorkel a lot, Tijeretas and Carola. There were lots of beautiful fish and urchins. The only bad thing was that I ran out of air before we'd finished the dive. Luckily, I'd been watching the gauge like a hawk and knew before it happened. The guide had me use his alternate air source, which was interesting.
On the second dive we went to a shipwreck called Caragua. It was incredible. There was a gigantic puffer fish along with lots of other little fishes. It was also really cool to be able to look up and see schools of fish swimming overhead and the rays of light from the sun slanting down through the water. I'm glad I finally got to use that open water certification. I was also glad I remembered most of what we were supposed to do.