Can one day of adventure make up for a not-so-exciting week?

Already, I’m falling behind in my goal to write once a week. It’s just too difficult to keep up with! And it’s not like I really did anything very exciting last week anyway. Mostly I hung around the house, except Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday afternoons when I went to “work”. However, I didn’t really do much there, either. Right now I’m supposed to proctor placement exams (remember classes start the 18^th) and grade them, but last week the coordinator I work with did most of it for me.

I think the biggest thing to happen was on Sunday. Sunday for my family, and I think a lot of families in Ecuador but I’m not sure, is family day. My family usually spends Sunday being active and/or having an adventure. This past Sunday was definitely Family Adventure Day. We drove to the southern part of Quito, near the Panecillo [a giant Virgin Mary statue; she is the patron saint of Quito], to a beautiful overlook call El Cinto. Here there’s a church located down the side of the mountain; I believe it was called “el cinto de la virgen” but I can’t remember. There were a lot of people around attending church, selling food, etc. From this overlook you could see the path the lava takes when Pichincha decides to erupt. It’s an active volcano, although I believe there’s only been ash lately. Everything was extremely green, and you could see little pueblitos down in the valley.

Afterwards, my family decided to drive down into the valley. We passed through one of the little pueblitos and kept going for about an hour. The country was extremely beautiful, but the road was pretty terrible, as it wasn’t paved. There were a ton of little places to eat advertising fresh trout (trucha), chicken (pollo), and guinea pig (cuy). Every so often we would stop at one of these places and my dad would ask how much far to the “aguas termales”. I had no idea what these were, and was really afraid we were driving all this way for some special drink. If I didn’t like it, I was going to feel really terrible after all the effort.

Finally, we reached a fork in the road with an entrance gate to Urauco. After paying the entry fee, we drove on for another 10 minutes. At the end of the road were some natural pools, one heated by water from Pichincha. This was what was meant by “aguas termales”. Unfortunately, none of us had brought swimwear, so I just looked at the pools. Really, just looking at them was nice too because they were nestled in a valley between some mountains and thus surrounded by greenery.

But this was not the end of the adventure, of course. Apparently there were some very pretty waterfalls up in these mountains surrounding the pools. So naturally, we were going to climb the mountain to look at the waterfalls. Having only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before, because I was hanging out with another WT volunteer and some Ecuadorians, this did not initially sound like an awesome idea. However, the waterfalls were definitely worth it. Not gonna lie, I was pretty scared during some of the climbing as parts were really steep and you had to hold onto ropes to keep your balance. But my family kept encouraging me, and I was doing better then Chiqui (the family Chihuahua, he always comes out with us on Sunday), so it wasn’t too bad. The scenery was beautiful, and it was lightly raining/misting so it was nice and cool.

After we returned from our mountain trek, Ariel stripped down to his undies and swam in the heated pool while the rest of debated whether to eat at the pools or at one of the little stands along the drive back. My family really wanted me to try the trout, so somewhere along the road was decided as best. Unfortunately, as we drove back, we discovered none of the places advertising trout actually had any. I suspect this was back it was already about 2:30, and most of the people were eating as we drove up. Eventually we had to settle for chicken in the little pueblito we’d passed through on the way up. I think my family was a little sad about this, but I thought the soup was good so it was fine with me.

So that was my big adventure for the week. This week I’ve been basically doing the same as last week, although I did hang out with another WT volunteer (Emily M) on Monday before work. Luckily, I’ve actually been doing work at work this week, too, so I’m not as bored. Yesterday the U.S. played Ecuador in a soccer game, so that was also fun to listen to while working. (Ecuador won, naturally.) Tomorrow, my dad is taking me and Emily M to meet a tattoo artist that he knows (he’s the cousin of my dad’s nephew), so that’ll be interesting. If I can find a symbol of Ecuador that I like, I will be getting another tattoo while here. But I have a year, so I’m not in a big hurry to get that done.  So yeah, that’s about all I’ve got for now. Hopefully I’ll actually remember to write again on Sunday. It looks like I may climb Pichincha with Emily M or hit up Otavalo again. Who knows, it’s only Wednesday.

Some more fun facts about Ecuador:

1) Despite $20s being large bills, ATMs here usually only dispense 2 $10s and the rest of your cash in $20s. However, I got lucky yesterday and got all $10s.

2) Chocolate chips don’t exist here. You’d have to crush a chocolate bar, essentially.

3) The rainy season seems to be starting. You can usually expect it rain every afternoon now around 2 – 3 if you’re in Quito.

4) Smashing your finger in a car door hurts just as much here as it does in the States. (OK, so that one wasn’t really about Ecuador. I just had to mention that my finger is still bruised and swollen from shutting it in a car door Saturday night. But luckily I can use it again to type.)