Voy a la Quito: Guayasamin and Papallacta

So my weekdays are pretty boring: I go to Spanish class from 8-12:30, eat lunch at CafeLibro from 12:30-2:30, then either observe speech therapy or go to a class on bilingual language acquisition. So sorry about not posting anything this past week- but I didn't have much to post. Wednesday afternoon we had a free afternoon so I went to la fundacion de Guayasamin (one of the most famous Ecuadorean painters) and the capilla del hombre, which is a museum that Guayasamin worked to build before he died. His paintings are beautiful and almost all of them have some type of political message. There's one picture in the fundacion titled "El Presidente" and looks remarkably like a spoof portrait of President Nixon.

This weekend a few of the girls and I went to Termas Papallactas, which is about 1.5-2 hours northeast of Quito. The hot springs were relaxing and unlike anything I have ever seen before in my life. Papallacta is located in a valley, so there were huge, green, tree-covered mountains all around. Cows, sheep and pigs were roaming around on the mountain side and one of the girls on the trip swears she saw a bear. See the pictures below for more gorgeous images of Papallacta.

To get to and from Papallacta we took a public bus. It was probably one of the worst experiences of my life thus far. The bus was old and smelled like a combination of feet and throw up (after riding on the bus for about 10 minutes, I understood the origin of the throw up scent). There were crumbs all over the floor and the driver was blaring his favorite tunes. Getting onto the bus was an experience in itself. The bus slows down, you jump on, and then try your best to balance through the aisle as the driver accelerates from 0-60 in about 5 seconds. But I think the best part of this story is the tiny, crappy road we drove on to Papallacta. The road is curvy, small (I mean, it's a miracle that two cars can pass each other without touching), located on the side of a mountain, and has potholes spaced about 5 cm apart. But neither the size of the road nor the potholes kept the bus driver from driving under, what felt like, 80 miles an hour. I was literally having to swallow my vomit so that I wouldn't be sick on the bus and get thrown off in the middle of nowhere. Like I said, it was a nightmare. I got home about 2 hours ago and my stomach is just now starting to settle. And the best part of this is that next weekend we are going to a small village located in the jungle and have to take the same Death Highway again. The hot springs were worth the trip- at least I keep telling myself that.