But it wasn't a rock... it was a ROCK LOBSTER

Friday 11 September 2009:

After class, went and bought pants with Bess and Annie. Then Annie and I came back to my house so I could change and we could drop off our new pants, ate some delicious guacamole, then went to Parque Ichimbía for Quitofest. When we got there, we met up with (e)Scott and listened to the last few songs of Walls of Jericho's set.

Okay, Ecuador is a super tiny country, and I was not aware that so many metalheads lived in such a place. The Parque was full of Iron Maiden t-shirts, creative hair, and vendors selling bootleg cigarettes and boxed wine. We saw Metamorfosis--an Ecuadorian heavy metal band--and Angra--a Brazillian progressive-metal band, ate pizza, jumped on the oddly spongy grass, and headed home pretty early.

Walking from Ichimbía to La Mariscal (where it would be cheaper to catch a taxi), we met Carlos, a student at the Universidad Católica, who told us we were in a bad area and then talked to us about newspapers. I got home, watched some of The Hangover with José, then went to bed.

Saturday 12 September 2009:

Woke up at 8AM to a nearly-empty house. José was leaving to go climb a mountain, and Rita was somewhere else, and Rosita hadn't come over yet. I took a shower, packed a bag, and left for Río Coca at 10AM to meet Annie so we could find Bess and embark on our journey to Papallacta--the hot springs. Once we were all together, we had to figure out how exactly we were going to get to Papallacta. After meeting at Estación Norte, we took a bus to El Recreo, which took us to Quitumbe, which then took us on the route Lago Agria, on which was our stop on Papallacta.

We watched some movie about people getting eaten by lions (all the bus movies are super violent and super lame), and after more than two hours on the bus, we decided to ask the driver--again--where we were supposed to get off. He said five minutes, and we were excited.

He kicks us off the bus in the middle of nowhere, along a stretch of road in the middle of the Andes Mountains. A few kilometers back, we had passed the center for the special narcotics police and a billboard warning of the apparently abundant number of drug traffickers in the region. Great. The three Gringas pull out our guidebooks but have no idea where we are. A family comes up to us and asks where we're headed. When we tell them, "Vamos a Papallacta," they look at each other, look at us, and look down the road; "It's about two hours back," they tell us. Impossible!, we think, but then we realize that our bus driver was a complete idiota, and start to walk.

This is at about 4PM (and for those of you keeping track, I had been travelling for six hours). If Papallacta really was two hours away, then we could probably make it there before sunset. Probably. What would our mothers think right now?, we asked ourselves, We're three white girls in the middle of the Andes Mountains' narco-trafficking zone, walking to who know's where, and we have about two hours of sunlight to get to this Papallacta--if it actually exists. Excellent.

After a while, we flag down a bus and hop on. After about an hour (an hour! Our busdriver, who told us numerous times that he would let us know when we were supposed to get off, dumped us in the middle of nowhere, an hour past our destination! Jackass.), we arrive in Papallacta. It's nearly dark, so the first thing we try to do is find a hostel. We can easily find the one that the guidebook suggests--Hostel Coturpa--but it doesn't have a roof. Hmm. Once we get in there, though, it's fine, and after haggling over prices, we can finally relax.

The next order of business is food. After wandering around a bit, we find a place that serves trucha (trout) and get settled. The food is delicious, but the beer is Pilsener, which means it's kind of shitty. But for 600mL, it's cheap, and why be picky when you can drink 600mL of beer? Haha. We ate, drank, played with our trucha heads, and bought yogurt, and at about 7PM, we headed for our basement room in Hostel Coturpa.

This is when silly-time began. High-waisted jeans, yogurt faces, funny text messages... it was a special moment for all of us. Bedtime was at 9PM because we had to get up early for the Termos--Papallacta's famous hot springs--in the morning.

Sunday 13 September 2009:

Annie's alarm went off at about 530AM, and after donning swimsuits and all the clothes that we could wear at once (it was suuuper cold up there), we headed for the Termos. The sun hadn't yet risen, and the streets were empty. Occasionally a rooster would crow, but for most of the 3km walk, it was just the sounds of us huffing and puffing up some pretty wicked hills.

We got to the Termos at about 7AM. The steaming water felt great after our frozen hike, and because it was so early, the pools were almost empty. The best part about being in the hot hot water was when we decided we had to jump in the freezing cold pools in order to really have the cleansing experience. We ended up doing that three or four times, and it never got any easier, haha.

Around 8AM the sun rose, and at about 9AM more people started to show up. We tried out most of the pools, got some sun (I think all three of us got sunburnt despite slathering on sunscreen fairly often), and left at like 10AM. The walk back was easy-peasy: it was all downhill and the air had warmed up a little. We went back to the hostel, packed up our stuff, and left. Before leaving town, we stopped at an impossibly tiny market and got a big hunk of queso fresco and three rolls of bread to eat while we waited for our bus. It was the most beautiful snack of all time.

We boarded a bus (a really shady one, actually) and peaced out of Papallacta. The bus ride home took less than two hours, and we didn't have to change buses at all from our first stop all the way to Río Coca. And this time, it only cost $2 instead of about $10. Hahaha. We parted ways at Río Coca and I rode the Ecovía line to Bellavista and walked the few blocks from the Bellavista stop to home. I got back just in time for almuerzo (gnocci!!) and a nap.

Now it's totally homework time. I have to read some Género y Sociedad, write two response thingers and make a collage for my brand-new art class, and do a hundred workbook pages for Grámatica Avanzada. I shall post pictures when my computer decides to cooperate (which might not be until I get a new one).

Love,

Gina