Appreciating the Natural Beauty of Ecuador – Without my Phone

My experience in Ecuador has very likely been different from that of every other SST’er here. Yes, we took the same classes and went on the same trips. One of these included a few days in the town of Mindo and a visit to a waterfall. In my excitement to get into the water, I completely forgot to remove my phone from my pocket! This photo, which I believe is of me the first time I was splattered by the direct power of the falls, is before I noticed the familiar weight still in my pocket. So yes, I spent a long time with my phone submerged in the water; long enough for my battery to be completely ruined and for me never to see the light of my screen again. Needless to say, the photos in this blog are credited to SST classmates!

As we continued this trip, based at a breathtaking hotel filled with an abundant amount of plants and this stream in its backyard, I tried my best to take my mind off the huge mistake I had made. Would it ruin my entire experience? I was certainly out at least a few hundred dollars for either a new battery or phone, and I didn’t want to purchase new products until I returned to the States because of the higher cost to import technological products. Fortunately, the SST program had a couple of spare phones in case of situations like mine. I’m eternally thankful that I still have a device that’s usable if a problem arises, but the phone being four to five years old means that it’s nowhere near the power of the phones everyone is using today. Constantly updating apps on a cheap phone leads to a slow device that I cannot quickly pull out to scroll on or take any photos of decent quality. For some perspective, I’ve only successfully scanned one QR code by taking a screenshot of it and expanding it to the entirety of my laptop screen. Thank you to everyone who agreed to let me use their photos to help tell this story!

So, what am I doing without my phone? While it remained for a little while, I’ve now lost the urge to reach into my pocket in a moment of boredom. Instead, I spend time with my own thoughts or practice my Spanish. It’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s improved a LOT over the past two months, especially considering that I had never taken a single class before 2025 began. I think this is partly because the distraction of my phone is gone; I can either listen to native Spanish speakers or do that thing where you think through conversations in your head (except that they, too, are in Spanish). Another is to simply look at the incredible natural landscapes of Ecuador.

My screen time hasn’t completely disappeared, of course. Much of the time previously spent scrolling on my phone has been replaced by scrolling on my laptop, but I feel more free from the constraints of my phone. Since starting college, one of my goals has been to live in the moment more. I genuinely think that losing my phone has allowed me to do this more often. For example, when visiting Baños, we visited another waterfall, Cascada El Pailón del Diablo.

This river represents the SST experience. It’s huge, unrelenting, and filled with mud. While my current daily life is so different from my time in the US, time in Ecuador trudges onward the same as it would at home. It’s also easy to see the mud in the river, but I think that that is an insult compared to the massive amounts of water — the liquid of life — that is also present. In life, it’s easy to focus on the bad experiences, like taking your phone for a swim, but that’s not the only thing I’m going to remember from studying abroad. No, I want to remember the community I’ve built, the language skills I’ve learned, the wisdom I’ve gained, and the stunning natural landscape of this breathtakingly beautiful country.