Pasochoa and some more of the city

Theater in Quito

In the past two weeks I have seen two one-person plays. Before this I had never seen a one-person play and wasn’t sure what to expect, especially because they were in Spanish. I went to see the first one with my program director and a friend from our group. The play was called “Nadie,” and when it was over my friend turned to us and said:

“Ok…so what just happened?”

I was quite relieved to hear that she was equally confused and even more relieved when our program director explained that our confusion was probably because almost the entirety of the play had been spoken in metaphors. We agreed that at least it was an exercise in trying to understand Spanish.

We decided to give the theater another shot and returned the next week to see a one-man adaptation of Hamlet. This play was much easier to understand, and knowing the general plot helped. In anticipation of watching a Shakespeare play in Spanish, one member of our program said, “I’ll probably understand the version in Spanish better than the original Shakespearean English!” Nevertheless, I think it will be a while before we return to see a one-person play.

Camping

On Saturday morning we left to go camping on Pasochoa, an extinct volcano (it’s last eruption was roughly 100,000 years ago) about an hour and a half from Quito. The travel cost for each individual was a total of $1.75, which included a 45 minute trolley ride to the South end of Quito, an hour bus ride to the town next to the national park, and a 20 minute pick up truck ride to the visitor’s center. Much to our embarrassment the police at the trolley station insisted on escorting us to the South Quito bus station a few blocks away. Apparently 10 gringos carrying backpacks and sleeping bags are just too much of a target to walk by themselves.

The volcanic soil is extremely fertile, so the area around Pasochoa is very lush. There are lots of bromeliads in the trees!

When we arrived we set up camp, ate some PB&J sandwiches, and set off up the volcano. Our goal was to make it to the summit, which according to the map would take 8 hours roundtrip. After getting slightly turned around on the poorly marked trails (or rather, unmarked trails), we decided to get as high as we could and then turn around at 3pm in order to make it back before sunset.

Hiking through thick foliage.

At the false summit, covered in sweat and rain.

A few of us made it to the false summit, but it was too foggy to see the view or even see the real summit. The climb to the false summit was the hardest hike I have ever been on. After four hours of scrambling over muddy roots and then trudging through long grass, we were completely exhausted. Even though we had been living at 9,300 feet for almost a month, the high altitude was quite a challenge while climbing up to 13,766 feet. When we returned to camp we found the rest of our group sunbathing on the grass, and we immediately sat down next to them to munch on our left over trail mix.

Our Ecuadorian version of trail mix: almonds, raisins, peanuts with some sort of sugar coating, prunes, and roasted/salted avas (a relative of the lima bean).

The view in the morning from our campsite.