The Long Journey to Papallacta II

We have been to Papallacta before, but never like this.

Tamara, Meghan, and Ayelet keeping their backs to the wind

The road was long, rainy, and being swept with strong winds. The hiking conditions were so bad that two of those three hikers in the picture above would not arrive to Papallacta on foot, but by bus. And frankly, I do not blame them.

Greg before the trail gets rough

We started with a group of nine people on Saturday morning on what we hoped to be a 5-7 hour hike through a beautiful lake district in the Cayambe-Coca National Park. After walking two miles up a service road to a mountain pass, our group decided to split up. Half of the group went back because of the gusty wind and driving rain.

As four of us journeyed on, I soon began to regret my choice. I could barely see. Our small group walked at different paces so I was soon on my own, ankle deep in mud and water, and slipping down the trail. Soon a hard fall in the mud instantly followed by another made me frustrated and shaky. My feet were still dry, but not for long.

As I pushed on from one trail marker to the next, I was glad that the clouds were not so thick and that the rain was letting up. However, the trail turned from an endless mud pit into a shin-deep bog. The occasional hop over a puddle would forcefully drive my feet deep into the deceiving marsh. Words from my dad were now stuck in my head, "Don't let your feet get wet or you will be cold."

What I did not know at the time was that I was about halfway through the hike at that point. I stopped to gather my thoughts and take a rest as I entered the lakes region of the reserve.

From there on out, the hike was mostly flat, but the muddy patches kept reappearing. I was fed up, but knew I had to push on. I needed to get my brain off how bad the conditions were and onto something else.

So, I decided to do some math. Everything here is metric and the trail signs let me figure out that I was hiking at over 10,000 feet and that my journey would end up to be around 9 miles. I had finished the hard part and was excited to meet up with Ayelet and the group who were comfortably sitting in the thermal baths in Papallacta.

We had a refreshing overnight stay with friends and roasted s'mores over the campfire in our cabin. You can be assured that a Papallacta III will take place, just maybe on a different path.

A hummingbird to point us home

Banos

{Wow, sorry for the delay! I just realized this one never got posted! I'll be posting more soon about our latest trip to the coast} It seems like there has been one weekend vacation after another the last few weeks - last week the school had off on Friday for Thanksgiving and this week, Greg has off Monday and Tuesday for the founding of Quito (las fiestas de Quito). Last weekend we rode down to Banos, a popular town about 3.5 hours from Quito that was named after the hot springs there. Now the town has way more than the hot springs that most tourists enjoy, but we were there mainly for some rest and relaxation so the hot springs were our main focus.

Sunset on our first night in Banos

My beloved hammock on the porch

We stayed at a place outside of town called La Casa Verde, which I would highly recommend to anyone going to Banos. It's an ecological guesthouse run by two lovely expats and it attracts such a cool crowd of people. We got a room with a hammock outside of our room and it was well-used by me. On our first morning, we went to the hot springs that were close to the hotel. It turned out to be a very good choice because it was a lot less busy than the ones in town. It was called the Santa Ana hot springs and it was across from the Samurai hotel. These hot springs didn't have the hottest baths, like the popular one in town, but it had a very comfortable hot bath and nice scenery with a wall of bamboo sheltering one of the pools from the wind. We found Banos to be very windy, especially in the afternoon and evening. It was sort of unexpected, but in the sunny afternoon, it was welcome.

After we got back from the baths, we went into town to grab lunch at Cafe Hood. The food was the best we had in Banos! The desserts weren't the best, but I had a delicious lasagna and Greg had a potato curry. We took our bathing suits so we could try the more popular thermal baths in town that were open into the night. They were SO crowded and not nearly as pleasant as the ones we had gone to in the morning.

View from the porch at La Casa Verde

The hotel had a beautiful glass bottle wall on the staircase -
this would be something I would love to add into a future home!

Chilling Out at the Hot Springs

Greg and I headed out on our first independent day trip to the lovely hot springs of Papallacta a few weekends ago. We'd heard such good things about them and are probably the last ones of our friends to head out there, but timing was not right before. Sorry I don't have pictures for you because we left our camera behind, not knowing if there were secure lockers or not. You'll just have to take my word for it that they were wonderful.

The thermal baths have two parts: spa and regular thermal baths. Since there was about a $10 difference per person, we decided to try our luck with the regular thermal baths. The first one we went into was warm, but not hot, and there were plenty of kids in there.

So we headed up to the second more secluded baths. This was where all the adults were and it was definitely hot. We'd have to sit out on the steps for most of the time because it was too much otherwise. There were two or three other baths that were even hotter, but we didn't do much more than stick our toes in because we liked the second one we tried. We even chatted for a while with a Guayaquil couple - the wife wanted to practice her English really badly and Greg even got to practice a bit of his Spanish speaking and understanding.

It was fairly easy to get to Papallacta from our area, but required a taxi, bus and truck to get all the way up to the baths (only on the way there). In the end, the bus ride was only 1.5 hours and was shorter than I imagined. Luckily, we had more or less specific directions on how to get the bus. On the way back, we took the truck back down, the bus to an outskirt of Quito, and then 2 buses from there to our apartment. Sounds confusing, but we could not have done that a month ago without getting horribly lost.

Our next adventure will be going to Mindo, about 2 hours away, for the November holiday. We will definitely bring our camera since there will be a lot of birds, butterflies, plants and other interesting things to see there!