Final retreat into nature, followed by a streak of productivity...

This past weekend I went on a field trip with a class that I’m not actually in, but it was to a place on my list that’s kind of hard to get to, so I asked if I could go. When Saturday morning rolled around I was feeling a little stressed out and hesitant about going, since Friday I ended up seeing Iron Man 2 and getting slightly less work done than planned. However, it turns out that my final retreat into Ecuador’s natural beauty did me well. I have completed a bunch of research, a 13-page paper, a 7-page paper, and a 3-page paper all in Spanish. I’ve got one more 7 pager, a presentation, and 2 exams to go.

Anyway, the trip this weekend was really fun and pretty low key. We left at 8am on Saturday morning, stopped at an indigenous market along the way, and arrived in Quilotoa around lunchtime. Quilotoa is a caldera, which is a volcanic crater that collapsed and filled with water. Because of all the sulfur, the color of the water is an incredible greenish turquoise. We were pretty much free to do what we wanted, so we hiked down to the lake, which takes about 30 min, but I think it took us closer to an hour because we stopped to take so many pictures. It wasn’t quite as cold at the bottom because there was less wind, so we ate our lunches and laid out to enjoy the sun for a while (although we were still wearing fleeces…) After that we went down to the water and some people went kayaking. We hung out, and then started to make our way back up. Some decided to pay to ride mules, but the rest of us hiked. That evening there was nothing on the schedule, so we hung out for a bit and went to look at the stars. I knew it was going to be cold in Quilotoa, but I wasn’t concerned since I had already been to a bunch of cold mountains. However, I didn’t realize that we would be staying right by the lake. We each slept in all of our clothes (4 layers for me) and each bed had about 5 wool blankets. There was a little wood stove, which didn’t do much, but luckily I was nice and toasty underneath all of the blankets.

Sunday morning we got up and had a talk with one of the Indigenous women who works at the hostel. This was part of an assignment for the class, but I stuck around to listen anyway. She mostly talked about their community and the role of tourism, but it was really interesting. We were on the road by 10, so I was home by 1:30. And that’s when my productive streak began. Hopefully I can keep it up!