El Cambio de las Estaciones: Calderón and Quilotoa

After a long two day school week, it was finally time for un feriado, the holiday for Día de los Muertos! Wednesday morning was the actual day for Día de los Muertos, and I and nine more of my friends met at the bus station in order to go to Calderón, a parrish on the edge of Quito that does the traditional celebration in cemeteries for Día de los Muertos. Although we accidentally went to the wrong bus station (oops, add another 45 minutes to bus all the way to the other side of Quito and another 25 cents), we made it to the town around lunchtime. We went to the center of town to find lunch, but instead we all enjoyed some healthy fried street food in the local market. After a rather disappointing morning, we went to the main event- the cemetery!

There was a large line to get inside the cemetery and inside, there were even more people! Lots of families were sitting around the graves of their loved ones and sharing lunch and drinking colada morada, which is the tradition for this holiday.

Colada morada drink and a piece of bread on a gravestone

Almost all of the graves were covered with lots of different colored flowers and purple wreaths (purple signifies death). I also thought it was extremely interesting to see how intricate all of the graves were:

One of the beautiful gravesites

Next we went to a nearby market/festival. There were hundreds of florists and people selling wreaths and religious paraphernalia. There were also lots of food and craft vendors, who sold clothes and key chains and the traditional marzipan figurines, which are intricate crafts made from bread.

After returning to Quito by bus (which cost a whopping 30 cents), I finalized the plans for the surprise birthday party for my friend Tori's 21st birthday. We went to Crepes and Waffles, which a Columbian based company that desperately needs to franchise to the U.S. Crepes, waffles, and birthday candles under one roof turned out to be an excellent night.

Crepe with strawberries, bananas, chocolate, and mora ice cream

The girls and Tori with her birthday crepe (they I.D. you to be sure it's your birthday)

The next morning I met up with nine of my other friends at the bus station. After the words "So far everything is going so smoothly!" slipped out of my mouth, we had to wait in line for over an hour for the bus to Latacunga, of course. Latacunga was our first stop on the way to Quilotoa, which is a small town of 150 people that is there for the sole purpose for tourism. The Quilotoa loop consists of a giant lagoon (inside a volcano!) that you can hike all the way around. When we arrived around 5pm, it was so cloudy, you could barely see. In fact, we were at such a high altitude that we were actually in a cloud!! That night, dum dum duuuuum, we finally tried cuy (guinea pig)! After all of the hype around trying cuy, it was actually kind of gross and was just chewy and salty.

The way it is traditionally served (pic from Google Images)

Our cuy was cut into pieces. Jacqueline, Bethany, and Hannah with the plate of cuy.

Friday morning we woke up early in order to start the long hike around Quilotoa. The view from the top was absolutely beautiful- the most beautiful thing I have seen in Ecuador.

The group at the top!

The hike takes 5-6 hours and several people had told us that it was much easier to go to the right. As we began the hike, we were all laughing about how we would never want to climb back up because it was SO steep. After we hiked almost down to the waters edge, we realized that there was no other way to go except back up. We had thought that the hike was along the waters edge, but unfortunately it was at the top. Since there was nothing else we could do, we hiked down the rest of the way to the water (which is green with spots of blue from the sulfur) and then turned around.

Success! At the bottom...

After the brutal hike back up, we rested for a bit and then decided to do part of the REAL 6-hour hike. We hiked for about an hour (which was SO much easier than our previous hike) and enjoyed some beautiful views and a pot-luck picnic of snacks.