Fuya Fuya

Pic 1: a little bouldering
Pic 2: the view... didn't last long, because we were in a cloud higher up
Pic 3: Club Andinismo... everyone on the Fuya Fuya day trip
Pic 4: Pam and I on our way to Fuya Fuya

I feel like I never know what’s going on here… in regards to plans for the day with my family. I think it’s a combination of the Spanish, but then also, people just being so relaxed and not really having plans until they happen. Example A: Yesterday morning I went downstairs to ‘my’ house to have a cafecito (coffee) with my mom and her cousin, Alicia. We then made plans (I thought) to go to lunch. We left around 12:30pm and there were 5 of us, and 2 little boys, all piled in this old Crown something or other car. We went to the quesadilla place and bought a bunch of “quesadillas” (completely different than our quesadillas) and got them “to go.” I was wondering why we weren’t eating them. So, we get back in the old brown car, drive a few blocks and it stalls out and will not re-start. We are on a hill (of course, because we’re in Quito) and have to get out and push this car up hill for a few feet, blah blah. The crazy thing is- everyone acted like this was a normal thing they do. No one got frustrated, mad, impatient, annoyed… nothing. It was great. Heck, I didn’t care, I had nowhere to go. But it really hit me about how darn patient everyone is with basically everything.

So back to the day. After we remedied the car troubles, one of the cousins dropped my mom, Alicia, and I off at the peluquería (hair cut place). It’s probably 1:30pm now. We had a total girls afternoon: manicures, pedicures, they got their hair washed and styled, etc. So fun (and dirt cheap too… mani AND pedi $9)! Now, it’s 3:30pm (still no lunch… should have had my wheaties instead of corn flakes at 8am). It was my grandpa’s birthday, so the whole family was going to go to Mass at 4pm. So, off to Mass we go. We finally get around to eating lunch at 5:30pm. It was delicious though, worth the wait!

I should know by now, that if you agree to go to lunch, you probably will not be back until dinner time or even later. This has happened on multiple occasions.

Today (Sunday) I went on a trip with Club Andinismo. It is an adventure club through my university, but you do not need to be a student to do the trips. We met at 6am at the school and then took a bus about 2 hours away. We went to climb a mountain near Otavalo named Fuya Fuya. There were 23 people total and only 2 other girls from my program, so there was a lot of opportunity to talk in Spanish and meet some Ecuadorians.

I guess I had never climbed a mountain before, I hadn’t realized that until about halfway up the mountain. Let’s just say that I did not know what I was getting myself into. Less than 10 minutes into our climb, I really thought I might have to turn around and wait for everyone to come back in 6 hours. I could not breath. My friend (who had been on one other hike) told me that after about 15 minutes I would get more accustomed to the thin air and it wouldn’t be as hard. Well, I don’t think I got accustomed until we were headed back down, 3.5 hours later! I kept going back and forth from thoughts of “This is completely miserable” to “God, this is amazing! Thank you!” I literally was a huffin’ and a puffin’ the entire way up.

Once at the top (thank God! … literally), we ate our lunches and then most of us went on a little side hike. We went over to another peak of the mountain… the tallest of Fuya Fuya. This hike eventually involved some serious bouldering. My other friend, Pam, was a hilarious commentator the entire time. She said something to the effect of “At what point does this go from being cool to being dangerous?…. I’m pretty sure we’ve crossed that threshold.” I did get a little nervous on this side hike, but we were with a lot of people that knew exactly what they were doing and helped us the entire way. At any point of feeling uncomfortable, we could have stopped and gone back…. several people did that.

I still can’t believe how incredibly difficult the entire day was. Even going down was tougher than I thought it would be. It feels awesome to have done it though!!

This weekend I’m off to a beach town, Canoa. It has been really easy and cheap to travel so far, so I am trying to take advantage of it all while classes aren’t super busy.

Mucho amor!