Quilotoa!

This past weekend was spent celebrating the battle of Pichincha... or whatever it was that gave us monday off! On saturday morning, a bunch of worldteachers and I wound through the mountains by bus to the tiny town of Chugchilan. We stayed at a baller hostel which for 10 dollars a night included breakfast AND dinner. It was fantastic. And a good thing that they had 6 blankets on each bed because it got cold up in the mountains. Pretty much the weekend was spent playing bananagrams and comparing our countdowns until when we leave and talking about what food we miss the most. (Oh My G-d! meeeeee too!!! I would do ANYTHING for macaroni and cheese with breadcrumbs on top!!! auuuuuuuuuugh!) But we also did get to see the beautiful Quilotoa lake! it's a volcano/crater lake in the middle of the mountains. According to one of our truck drivers, it last errupted in the 1700's and left the landscape as mountainous as it is. Half of our group hiked down to the water and back up. I decided to go with the adventurous group and hike around the rim of the crater. We were told that in about 3 hours or about halfway around the lake, we would hit a river and a small town, where we should deviate from the trail to hike back to chugchilan. However, after asking hikers coming from the other direction, we realized it was possible that this river and small town do not in fact exist and we would not know where to turn off the trail. Plus, the looming rain clouds were fast approaching the higher cliffs that we would have to climb, and we could hear thunder in the distance. After two hours of hiking, we thought it would be wiser to hike back the way we came and hitch a ride back to chugchilan from the town of Quilotoa. This turned out to be a good decision. We avoided the rain and we safely made it back to chugchilan in the back of a pickup truck (as we had missed the last bus by 45 minutes). Overall, it was a great weekend. I got to hang out with Americans who commiserated with my Ecua-frustrations, and I got to hike and see the beauty of this country with whom I currently have a love/hate relationship. It was literally, a breath of fresh (cold, mountain) air.