Feb 7
Week 2: Soroche
Every single day in Quito feels like an entire week squeezed into 24 hours, and as exhilarating as this can be, it’s also exhausting. Just about anything made me cry. I cried at a really cheesy commercial about American farmers. I cried when I messed up the recipe for yuca bread. I cried as quietly as I could watching tv with my friends. I feel so fortunate to be studying abroad, but it is much harder than I ever thought it would be.
I think the rain was what was really getting to me, since it pretty much hadn’t stopped since we arrived in Quito. On Tuesday night, I went with a few other students to my professor’s apartment and we were able to cook dinner and it was such a healing process. We made quinoa soup, pan de yuca and bolón de verde, which are baked plátanos verdes, stuffed with queso fresco. It really inspired me to cook more when I return to Ithaca.
Wednesdays we typically have free DIY days. If you’re wondering what that means, so am I. Our professor explained DIY days as a chance to catch up on assignments, go to office hours, visit a museum or even just watch Netflix. The sun was out for the first time on Wednesday, so a group of students and I decided to walk an hour to an art museum of Ecuador’s most prolific painter.
Oswaldo Guayasamín realized close to the end of his career that most of his paintings were scattered all over the world, but he really felt like they belonged in his home country. So he designed his house into a museum and started to collect his paintings, as well as other indigenous artists’ works, and when he died he donated his beautiful property and everything in it to the public.
We soaked in as much sun as possible as I tried imagining Guayasamín swimming laps in the pool.
This day really changed my whole perspective on the trip. Maybe it was just the sun recharging my spirit, but everyday after I woke up in a much better place and was finally excited to be in Ecuador.
On Thursday we had regular classes, but we also visited an open air market to appreciate the art of bartering. We were told that after buying food from a vendor it’s custom to say “dame la yapa”, which pretty much means “give me the deal of the day” and the vendor will throw in an extra piece of fruit for free. I felt a little uncomfortable asking for a yapa and was content with buying my peaches.
Over the weekend I climbed Quito’s smallest inactive volcano and then the next day the world’s second tallest active volcano. That sentence is mind-boggling. The first hike we were promised was easy and flat and it was none of the above. The first hour was steep and the altitude makes any physical task ten times harder. While the trail leveled out briefly in the middle, it soon gave way to a muddy incline. It was so ridiculous that we couldn’t help but laugh. We were bear crawling up the side of a mountain, gripping onto any branch or clump of grass that could hold our weight. The view from the top was beyond worth the splinters and caked-on mud. Getting down was like a backyard slip and slide.
Under the impression that our hike up Ilaló was more like a long walk, we foolishly planned an excursion to Cotopaxi national park for the next day. Myself and a few other students really wanted to climb up to base camp at Cotopaxi, but we were warned that we would be starting the hike at 13,000 ft and finishing at 16,000. There’s a lot less oxygen at 16,000 ft and soroche (altitude sickness) can be quite nasty. But for me it was either die trying or have the biggest regret of my life and thank god we did because I don’t think anything will be able to compare to that sensation again. I will never be any closer to the sun in my life than I was at Refugio José Rivas. So freaking proud of myself and of my group. It was a bit comical how we were celebrating making it to the base camp as professional hikers were coming down from summiting Cotopaxi, a hike people train months for.
Oh and I did both hikes in Chaco sandals! Maybe not the smartest, but my dedication has paid off and my picture will be featured on Chaco’s insta page this Friday.
