Weekend Adventures: Papallacta

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” -Jawaharlal Nehru

We’ve been here for about six weeks now– experiencing a countless amount of traveling experiences filled with memories. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of our adventures. This past weekend I traveled to Papallacta with three other IES students for a day of finding our way, exploring the town and relaxing in the hot springs.

With vague directions from a Trip Advisor website, we set off for our adventure around 8 am. Three bus rides and 75¢ later we found ourselves being dropped off on the side of a road in Papallacta. Our online source explained that we would be able to take a short and inexpensive taxi ride through the town and up to the “termas” (hot springs), but with not many taxis in sight and beautiful views of the mountains, we decided to walk the 2.7 km uphill.

During our walk up, we were surrounded by small restaurants and homes, with fog covering the mountains in the distance. We stopped quickly for lunch and spent the remaining hours of the afternoon in the hot springs.

We left for our walk down around 3:00 pm, making sure we had enough time to catch a bus back to Quito…but by 4:40 pm we began to have other thoughts. At least three buses with ‘Quito’ signs had driven by without stopping. Just as we were about to try and find a taxi to drive us back to Quito, one bus pulled up to our bus stop. Although there wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit and we later found out that the bus was going to Quitumbe terminal (the terminal that is farthest south in Quito), a cheap and direct bus ride back to the city was just what we needed.

As I write about this adventure, I can’t help but look forward to each weekend to come and the new adventures ahead of us.