Offroading with UTPL

Friday, June 7^th, 2013

7am rolled around and that meant it was time for our mini road trip adventure with Carlos and Verónica (2 UTPL faculty advisors) in addition to Sam, Brita, Jessie, Joa, Diana and Ana. I showed up around 7:10 thinking I was perfectly on-time-late, but we wouldn’t actually get on the road until 8 due to some car confusion. Here’s hoping like hell that the 4WD works on these trucks…

We were on our way to Tres Lagunas first, with our final stop in Oña. On the way out of town and towards our destinations, we of course enjoyed chatting as we got to know each other better. A topic of common recurrence was my accent/vocabulary, being that they are heavily influenced by my stay in Buenos Aires. #sorrynotsorry. And while Ecuador generally maintains a good relationship with Argentina, they consider it to be the least “Latin American” country of all and regard Argentines as a bit stuck-up. I guess this is partly true, especially if you’re talking about porteños, but my love of all things Argentina doesn’t stem from the fact that I think the rest of the countries in South America son una mierda; it’s because I spent so much time there, met its people, traveled to its cities and grew so much as a person. So just hold on one minute, Ecuador, because I can guarantee after 2 months here, you’re going to have a room with a view in my heart.

For example…

We made a stop in Saraguro for breakfast. My eyes were practically bleeding from how tired I was, so it was obviously time for mate. I know that probably contradicts the argument I was trying to make above that I’m not an Argie elitist, but horchata, while ridiculously delicious and a beautiful fuchsia color, just isn’t going to give me that boost. To balance out the bitter mate, however, I ordered a tree tomato smoothie. The taste was love…

But we were off again. After one mishap, we found the actual trail we needed and did some serious off-roading. Normally everything makes me carsick, so I was continually amazed that I was doing just fine. I mean, it wasn’t something I’d like to do for more than 45 minutes, but with the view and the company, it was more than tolerable. When we finally got up to the crossing, we found that of course the river was waaay too high and there was no way to cross. So we drove down the bumpy road again and decided to try on the Oña side.

As we made our way to Oña, the weather seemed to be clearing up so we had better hopes. But our hopes were dashed again when coming up from the other side we had even worse luck, not to mention that the roads were basically mud—but Veronica drove like a champion. The aquatics team braved the wet, windy páramo weather which team social science stayed in the car. I bought waterproof pants for this, but do you think I remembered to wear them? No of course not.

On our way out of town (which was a ride bumpy enough to dislodge your colon…) we saw a cow scratch its head with its hind leg. That’s probably not that interesting but I have never seen anything like that before and it’s worth remembering because it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen despite the fact that Veronica made it seem like that was common…Our guts all jumbled up, we stopped for linner where Sam had the pleasure of ripping my trout’s head off. My insides felt great…