Vale La Pena

Vale la pena. In Spanish it means "worth the pain," and you say it when some particularly difficult activity ends up being incredibly rewarding. It describes our weekend perfectly.

We got up at 3 am on Saturday morning to squish into a tiny van for the six hour drive to the tourist town of Baños. We all tried to sleep, with varying degrees of success. The bumpy roads, the cold air blowing in through the windows, and the tight space really didn't help. But when I couldn't sleep, I was rewarded by the most beautiful scenery--snowy volcanoes and green mountains, all populated with cows and stray dogs and horses.

Baños is known for its hot springs and night life, but everything about it excited us, from the tortoise in the hostel courtyard to the warm weather.

Besides for the teaching part, life in Otavalo (especially the meals) can begin to seem relatively slow and repetitive. So a breakfast of pancakes and homemade bread served on a rooftop seemed incredible. And even more exciting was how cheap it all was ($3 max) and the strange beetle that dropped into our sugar bowl.

After breakfast we put on our bathing suits and headed to the hot springs. We had all imagined this gorgeous natural setting with little waterfalls and places to sit among the rocks, but instead we found lots of overcrowded cement pools filled with murky water. The dark water made everything kind of sketch because you never knew who was touching you.

The temperature varied from pool to pool. The idea is to go from the hot to the cold to improve your circulation. It was relaxing and fun, but it didn't quite seem worth the six hour drive.

When we got back to the hostel we collapsed. My roommates and I had no idea what time it was when we woke up because we're so used to relying on our cell phones for telling time that we don't have watches. We couldn't find anyone else from our group, so we just chilled in a complete daze.

Later, when everyone else returned from their hike, we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant. It was not a very memorable evening, and we passed out fairly early, missing out on the night life that we had all anticipated.

But Sunday made it all worth it. We went on a drive to visit the famous, cascadas, or waterfalls. We hiked down to one of them, and walked over it on a little rickety bridge. If that wasn't enough, we got to crawl through muddy caves to stand underneath the water. Boys with long arms could actually reach out and touch it; the rest of us just stood there and got drenched (and whistled at, because apparently girls here can't be wet).

We changed clothes in the back of a restaurant and then drove out to the San Francisco bridge so some people could jump off it. That's right. Twelve dollar bungee jumping. I didn't have the balls, but I ran from one side of the bridge to the other as the other volunteers swung like a pendulum underneath.

Afterwards I felt fairly sick, so everything is a blur. There was dinner and some puking in the streets and a very uncomfortable bus ride, but as I said before, vale la pena.