An Incredible Experience

This trip to Ecuador was definitely one of the most incredible things I’ve ever done. From the people I met to the experiences we shared to how many things I actually learned, my experience with Help, Learn, Discover far exceeded what I ever thought it would be like coming into this trip. The unique part about HLD is how they offer such a multifaceted way of experiencing the beauty of Ecuador as it allows you to gain so much more out of it than you can ever imagine. The activities are really well planned and you don’t have to worry about the accommodations and food, which leaves you free to enjoy it to the fullest without having to stress over those little, yet incredibly important details.

For the Learn part of the trip you get to spend a week in Quito shadowing doctors by visiting different wards and watching surgeries while actually standing right there inside the operating rooms! It’s an experience unlike any other, especially for aspiring doctors. The Help portion was definitely my favorite part, as you’re in the village building houses for the local people who cannot afford proper housing themselves. It is sometimes hard, physical work as we did things like mixing concrete with only shovels, digging for the foundation of the house, etc. but I finished each day with the most rewarding feeling that we’re actually physically making a difference in other people’s lives. To see the result of our work at the end of the day, and to know that all of our fundraised money is going directly toward people who truly need it is amazing. And because we work alongside the locals and play with the children, we quickly built strong, lasting bonds with them, making it very hard to say goodbye when we had to leave. But the Discover part of the trip, which is scattered throughout the whole month, quickly helped take our minds off of missing the village too much, as we travelled to some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen and got to do some pretty exciting things. From Amazon hikes to waterfall rappelling to surfing to tubing down a river through the rainforest for a couple hours, this month was utterly packed with so many exciting things that I look back and wonder how we managed to fit all of it into only four weeks. But what really made this trip for me was getting to do all these incredible things with some of the best people I’ve ever met. You come into the group meeting so many new strangers, but you leave with some of the greatest friends.

I would also definitely recommend going on one of the extra weeks if possible. I went to Peru after finishing the month in Ecuador and I was really skeptical of how this next week could even meet the level of the rest of the trip, but once again, Peru far surpassed all expectations. It was different from Ecuador as there was a lot more sightseeing, but doing things such as spending time in the beautiful city of Cusco, watching the sunrise at Machu Picchu, and going paragliding off the cliffs of Lima on the Pacific coast were the perfect conclusion to what I already knew was one of the best months of my life.