The Adventure of a Lifetime

Monday, November 2^nd:

First of all, I have some pictures up on the Kodak gallery online. I’m pretty sure that I just have to send you an email invite, so if you want to look at them, just comment one of the blogs with your email address (click on the “comments” link below the blog) and I’ll send an invite.

This weekend we went on a huge trip South to Cuenca, but we went to a million other places too. We left last Wednesday for Salinas (13,000ft), which is a little town in the middle of nowhere but has tons of different factories that you can tour. To get to Salinas, you have to go through Guaranda, which is a small town that has basically nothing in it. So we left after classes on Wednesday and ended up getting to Guaranda at about 9. Unfortunately for us, the last bus from Guaranda to Salinas leaves Guaranda each day at 6PM. So we went and found a hostel in Guaranda that could accommodate seven (because half of our group wasn’t with us and was leaving to meet up with us in Alausi the next day).  The owner  of the hostel we found was really high, but it was cheap and clean so we stayed. The following morning, we took a school bus to Salinas (like with the school children all dressed in their uniforms, one more way that Ecuador is WAY different than the US) and got there at about 9AM.

In Salinas, we got breakfast (and the pepper top broke all over one of the girl’s eggs). From there, we toured the factories (specifically wool, chocolate, soccer ball, cheese and yogurt, and bread) and bought enough food from the food factories that we decided to just have a picnic with all the food that we collectively bought. During our picnic, some of the group played soccer with some little kids in the town, and Kyler kicked the ball at one kid (accidentally) and broke his nose. We met a girl who had just graduated from Harvard Law (and who was traveling on a $25,000 stipend from her future employer who she starts with in January), she was going to travel with us because she was alone, but she decided to stay in Salinas and we wanted to get on to Alausi, our next stop. To get back to Guaranda (because that is the only place you can get a bus anywhere else) the owner of the hostel that we ate breakfast at offered to let us ride in the back of his truck for free because he was headed to Guaranda. So we rode back to Guaranda and then found a bus to Alausi, where we met the rest of our group.

 In Alausi, we watched a parade of some school the first night and went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant (ironically, the Chinese food here is REALLY good). The next morning, we went to ride the train over the Nariz del Diablo, which is supposedly the most impressive feat in railway engineering in the world. You used to be able to ride on the top of the train, but then some Japanese girls were beheaded because they were “surfing”, and now you have to ride in the cabin. But it was still cool and scary. The tracks are RIGHT on the edge of the cliff and you basically look straight down the canyon hundreds of feet. To get down the canyon, the train goes down a bunch of switchbacks, so you weave forwards, then backwards, then forwards again. They stop and let you off a couple of times to take pictures, and overall it was a cool trip. We got a really cool group shot on the edge of a cliff at one of the stops.  After that, we really had no reason to stay in Alausi, and we found out that our hostel reservations in Cuenca (which we had to make way in advance because this weekend in Cuenca there were festivals that thousands of people come for) would be negated if we didn’t show up for both nights (meaning that night and the following). We then found out that we had already missed the last bus to Cuenca from Alausi for the night. So we were told that if we hiked up to this road up at the top of the mountain (Alausi is in a valley) we might be able to catch a bus coming from Quito towards Cuenca. So we hiked in the rain with all of our stuff…and waited for two hours, watching a million busses pass, none of which were headed to Cuenca. Finally we saw a bus pull into the gas station about a mile down the road, and decided that we would go ask that bus, and if it wasn’t going to Cuenca, we would stay in Alausi for another night and worry about the reservations tomorrow. So we went to the gas station and fantastically, that bus was going to Cuenca. Unfortunately, it was already packed and didn’t even have standing room for one, and we had twelve (and it’s a 5 hour trip). Meanwhile, Morgan was chatting this guy up in the parking lot of the gas station, and ended up finding out that he was on his way to Cuenca. But he was driving a gravel truck. He offered to let us ride on the gravel, so we end up taking this guy up on his offer and riding in the back of a gravel truck (and yes, it was filled with wet gravel) all the way to Cuenca.

 We arrive in Cuenca soaked and freezing (and SO dirty) at about 1AM, and take a cab to the hostel. After we checked in, the owner tells us that the hot water is turned on from 6-11AM and 6-11PM. Meaning that we have totally missed the hot water. So we all go to bed DISGUSTINGLY dirty, and fill our sheets (that we have to use again the next night) with little rocks.

In the morning, we got up and went out to breakfast and walked the city. The festivals were in full swing so we got to do lots of fun stuff like listen to live music and watch magic shows in the street. Also, we saw a bunch of locals dancing in the street and joined them which turned into a HUGE crowd of people dancing in the middle of the road (on a side note, we found a bakery called Dolce, and it had REAL cookies…which is really exciting because the cookies here [even if they are called “chocolate chip”] are HORRIBLE and not anything like any chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever had). For the rest of the day, we just walked around and took pictures, and then went back to the hostel and took a nap. When everyone woke up, we went and got pizza and gelato for dinner (delicious), and then since it was Halloween (and we had all previously bought costumes in Quito) we got all ready to go out. In Ecuador, Halloween isn’t really celebrated, but they do have “Dia de los Brujas” (Day of the Witches), so there were a few people in costumes, but a lot of people out walking around. For a few hours we just walked around and wished people a happy Halloween all dressed up (and about a million of those people wanted pictures with us) and went into some random bars. Then somehow we met on the street some of the people we had been dancing with in the street in the morning, and they took us to the nightlife part of the city, where we basically just danced all night at random bars.

**And then a quick story about our lack of language skills on Halloween…While we were walking, we were telling people “Feliz dia de los Brujas!” Which translates basically to “Happy Halloween”. But at one point, we realized that one of the girls in our group had the words mixed up, and was shouting to people “Buenas dias brujas!” Which means she thought meant “have a good day of witches”  but actually means “Good morning, witches!”

The bus back from Cuenca is 10 hours, so we got up really early and went to the bus station. So Sunday we basically rode the bus all day long, and watched this Korean-translated-to-Spanish soap opera for eight hours (which was torture, there was lots of sob-y crying from the adults in the show). Once you get back to Quito you end up at a bus station on the Southernmost tip of the city, so from there you take another bus for an hour to the area that we live.  We ended up getting home at about nine last night.

This morning, we all went to Lauren and Andrew’s house for breakfast and cooked pancakes and eggs with veggies which was SO good because we are all so sick of the food here. Later today, I think I might go get a pedicure because they’re like $3 here, and then I have no plans for today or tomorrow. We don’t have school until Wednesday because we have been on some kind of holiday since last Wednesday. However, this Wednesday will be our first day in the new CIMAS building, which is supposedly REALLY nice. So we’ll see…this weekend was quite the adventure so I hope things settle back to normal soon.