Monday, May 10, 2010

Quilotoa!

Indigenous market in Zumbahua




Felipe and I with Empanadas de Viento. Think of the best funnel cake or elephant ear that you have ever had. These are better...mostly because they cost 15 cents.





Gloria, Me, Emily, and Hannah.


Picnic! We were sitting on a ledge with our feet dangling over, enjoying the view.

We went kayaking and they gave me a broken half of a kayak paddle. It was virtually useless.


Gloria and I kayaking in the crater lake.

Max the Mule and I.


We were above cloud level.


That's rain. Much cooler if you saw it in person. We saw the cloud move in and start to rain. Really neat.



Quilotoa!

I hope this finds everyone doing well. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone very soon!

So this weekend I headed to Quilotoa with a group of friends for the last big trip of the semester. Quilotoa is a beautiful water-filled volcanic crater in Ecuador’s highlands. Neither words nor photos can describe its beauty. It was so huge and majestic, that it just can’t be captured by a photo. Truly awe-inspiring.

When we got there, we hiked down the caldera to the lake and had a picnic lunch admiring the view and the clouds. After lunch, a few of us went kayaking on the lake, which was really, really cool and definitely one of my favorite boating experiences. “SunFish-ing” with my family probably takes first place. Afterwards, we rode mules back up to the top. I named my mule Max (he ended up being a female named Marisol, but he’ll always be Max to me) and he was feisty. He nearly threw me off at one point, luckily on the side away from the plummeting mountainside, but it was still something of concern, I’d say.

That evening we caught the sunset and after dinner, some of us Midwesterners played Euchre and then went star-gazing. I thought the night sky in the Galapagos was brilliant but this one was even better. It was a dome of stars stretching forever in every direction and the longer we stayed out, the more stars seemed to appear. If it wasn’t so cold, I might have just slept outside. However, it was freezing, so freezing that I wore two jackets on top of my t-shirt and under armour, two pairs of thick hiking socks (thanks for the care package, parental units! MUCH appreciated!), a hat, and gloves to bed. The hostel wasn’t heated and after living in Quito for over four months, we weren’t accustomed to the “frigid” temperatures (it was probably in the low 40’s). My friend Gloria and I shared a bed and put all of the blankets from both of our beds onto one and were still cold for much of the night. We even put a rock that had been heated by the fireplace at the foot of the bed to keep out feet warm. It didn’t work very well but we eventually got to sleep regardless. We headed home in the morning, after being able to enjoy the view a bit longer.

I had a brilliant time this weekend. At first the trip strengthened my feelings of not being ready to leave, but by the end I was starting to realize the need to come to terms with the fact that I am going to leave in less than two weeks. I need to reflect and get closure on this experience so that I can leave Ecuador with a smile on my face, ready to move on to the next part of my life. This experience has changed me for the better and pretty soon I’m going to get to return to my life as a better me. That’s something to embrace, not dread.

However, I am still procrastinating “mis deberes” in order to write this blog entry. I’m at FLACSO, the local graduate university which has a real library, something PUCE lacks, in order to write a Biodiversity essay. I’m not sweating it too much because its only five pages but its funny how last semester, five pages in Spanish would have me seriously worried. Thank you, study abroad! Now for some…

FACTOIDS!

  • Because Quilotoa Lake is in a volcanic crater, the sulfur levels are too high to support much life, except perhaps some algae and microscopic organisms, no fish.
  • The locals who live near Quilotoa believe it is bottomless.
  • Star-gazing in Quilotoa, I was so close to the equator and the sky was so clear that I able to see the Southern Cross and the Big Dipper from the exact same spot.

Okay, that’s it for now! I hope everyone is doing well and had a happy Mother’s Day.

No comments:

Post a Comment