Volcanes y lodo

Ahhh, Sunday felt like 3 days! I woke up at 2:30 am to get ready for my trek to the volcano Pinchincha. My class met near the mexican embassy at 3:30 and from there we took about 8 different SUVs to Pinchincha. I was in a car with 3 other people. It was absolutely impossible to sleep on the way up, the road was absolutely terrible! A truck in front of us got stuck 4 times and had to be pushed!
We finally got to Pinchincha at about 5 am. We had to park a little further down than the rest of the people because our car got stuck. We had to hike about 3/4 of a mile up and it was sooooo hard, for everyone! We all had to take about 6 breaks becuase of the altitude, plus it was absolutely freezing and you couldn´t see anything because it was so dark and foggy. We made it to the top and rested for about ten minutes and then hiked a bit more to an area overlooking the crater. I love our Professor Theo.. on the way up to the 2nd point he was making us spell Pinchincha...for example. ¨Give me a P! Give me an I! and so on¨ it wasn´t as hard the second time. Then we sat and Theo gave a little talk about Pinchincha and how to prevent disasters in Quito ect. Pinchincha is actually 5 volcanoes, but 4 of them are extinct.
Unfortunately, there were too many clouds/fog to see anything, when there was supposed to be a spectacular view of Colombia and the entirity of Ecuador... oh well. All we could see was about 10 feet in front of us as we sat there freezing. It was an experience though..

We left Pinchincha at about 7 and then headed back to Quito. From Quito at about 9:30 am we took a bus to Papallacta. I took the best nap ever on the bus. We made a stop near the volcano where it was raining a bit to take some rock samples. Afterwards we hopped back on the bus to go to a different site. We got to this forest area and started hiking through the woods. It was amazing. Our professor theo pretty much just created his own path. We climbed up walls of mud using only tree branches to hold on too, and down and into the river and on trees, it was insane. It was so fun... i don´t really know how to describe it. We did this for about 2 hours I´d say? there weren´t too many bugs, just a few painful prickly plants and a lot of mud. By the end of it we were all covered in mud. Thank God I bought those hiking boots! they saved my life and my feet! Here are some pictures that show some of papallacta


After the forest we hopped on the bus again to go to a waterfall. Theo decided it was too dangerous to hike to it because the current of the river was too strong and instead we took some rock samples. I was secretly glad we didn´t go because by that point I was freezing!!
At that point, we had a choice to go to the hot thermal springs or back to Quito. Of course I chose the baños termales! They were absolutely amazing! It cost $6 to get in and there were all sorts of different temperatures of pools. It was extremely relaxing. We left at 6:30 and arrived in quito at about 8:30.
By that time I was completely exhausted, so I ate a bowl of soup and went to bed.
It was an absolutely amazing day. Unfortunately I don´t have photos of Papallacta, my camera would not have survived the mudslides that occured there.
Now I actually have to do some homework. I don´t have even close to the amount of homework I had in madison but i have a couple papers due next week that I should get a start on.