Road Trip!!!!

So far this semester, I´ve spent most of my time in Quito (where I live) and Cumbaya (where the university is), but last weekend we took a good road trip.

The kids in the U of I program took a bus last Friday (August 24) to the indigenous Quichua community of Peguche, about two hours outside of Quito. I knew that the trip was going to be overnight, so I packed pretty much everything I thought I might possibly need in my large backpacking backpack (is that redundant?). I arrived at the bus station to find all the other students with all their stuff neatly packed into bookbags. Apparently the Girl Scout motto of “be prepared” has caused me to just look like a person who is incredibly talented at over-packing and carrying a bag that could probably fit three bodies in it.

Anyway, our guide was supposed to be a professor from my university here who is from Peguche, but for some reason he couldn’t come, so our guide was Ñunche, his 15-year old son. When we arrived at Peguche, we dropped our stuff off at a community house, and then Ñunche led us on a hike up to a huge waterfall. Though none of us had swimsuits, the waterfall was too tempting, so we all played in it in our clothes and got soaking wet. Haha, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but the walk down the mountain was definitely a bit chilly. Okay, it was still a good idea.

When we got back down the mountain, we changed into the remaining dry clothes we had. For most people, this was their pajamas, but I had an extra pair of jeans!!!! Whoo-hoo, I knew I was a Girl Scout for some reason! Then we took our big yellow bus (driven by Patricio and his 9-year old son Esteban. Well, okay, Esteban didn’t drive, but he was a pretty cool navigator) to Otavalo, an indigenous market town for another HUGE lunch.

Then we went to Cotacatchi, where there’s a gorgeous volcanic lagoon. We took a chilly, but pretty, boat tour of the lagoon. It’s really weird because the nearby volcano causes there to be no fish in the lake. It was so cloudy and strange-looking that I thought I was in Scotland looking for the Lochness Monster. We were puttering along in the lake when all of the sudden this huge black thing moved beneath us in the water and our boat started rocking really hard. Our boat driver yelled “El Monstruo Locni!” (which roughly translates to Lochness Monster). I peed in my pants, but fortunately, as the Girl Scout I was trained to be, I had another pair.

Okay, sorry, that last paragraph was a load of BS, except for the part about the gorgeous volcanic Scotland-looking lagoon and chilly boat tour with no fish. It was a nice tour, but not very exciting so I thought that I should add something to spice it up. But it’s a good thing that there was no Monstruo Locni because I only brought two pairs of jeans and would have had to wear my pajama pants had I peed in my jeans.

But I digress. Anyway, after the boat tour we returned to the community house in Peguche where we all ate a delicious dinner of PASTA (they have TONS of rice at meals, but very seldom pasta) in a barn. It was a delicious dinner. I think it was supposed to be kind of Chinese food, but it had a strong Ecuadorian twist. Well, I don’t know what it was, but it was great.

Most of the girls stayed in the community house and the two guys stayed in a neighboring house, but four of us girls stayed in another Quichua family’s house.The four of us fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up to roosters crowing. (Ahhh, it reminded me of Tijuana!)

As we were getting ready, we heard a lot of long, loud squealing. We looked out the window to see the family tying down a HUGE hog and killing it. I walked outside to us the bathroom and brush my teeth to see the now dead hog lying on the ground. Well, I like ham as much as the next person, so I can’t really complain.

So the four of us girls headed back to the community house where we ate a large breakfast in the barn (it’s a really nice barn with a huge table). This time I knew the butter-looking stuff was cheese, so I took a good portion of that. After breakfast we walked around the village and watched some of the indigenous people work. One of the men was a musical instrument maker and made a set of pipes (that’s soooo not the correct term, but I forget the right term) out of wood in front of us and then played us a song on them. Then he, his 2-year old daughter, and his friend played a song for us out of a bunch of instruments they made. We also watched some weavers work to make hammocks and cloths which were amazing. They work so fast and their final products are gorgeous.

Then we went into Cotacatchi where there’s a huge leather market, and then Otavolo, a larger Quichua indigenous market town. Saturday is the biggest market day of the week, and there were vendors all over selling all types of stuff from good-smelling food to the products the indigenous people make. My host mom had kept telling me that I needed to get a scarf, so buying one became my mission.

Of course, there was lots of other cool stuff too, so I ended up bartering for some cloth (which is very versatile and spruces up my walls in the apartment), some jewelry, some scarves, and some headbands as well. I’m not a huge fan of bartering, but I was getting pretty good at it until I tried bartering for some bread at the local pandería and found that you can’t barter for that. So I paid 15 cents for my croissant instead of the 12 cents I was trying for. Yep, I can be quite the dumb gringa!

After a long day of bartering (ok 2 hours, but it’s tiring!) we stopped at a restaurant for another large lunch and headed back to Quito. I was so excited to show my host mom my new scarf so she would stop worrying about me catching a cold!