Papallacta and Cuicocha

So this weekend I had two field trips for Volcanology. On Saturday we left for Papallacta at 6:30 in the morning. The highlight of Papallacta is that it has hot springs which are naturally heated by the nearby volcano. But before we were allowed to relax there we made several stops to collect rocks. Our professor, Theo seemed to delight in forcing us to climb ridiculous slopes for no real reason. We had to scramble down one hill to get to a river where we had to find some green rocks. It turned out that they were all at the top anyway. I enjoyed it though. We made one stop where we climbed up a nearly horizontal slope which was really muddy and slippery. We ended up having to use vines and brushes to climb up. After we got to the top of this slope, we then proceeded to go down another. A problem was that there were over 50 people there, so there was a lot of waiting for people to get down. It would have been a lot more fun with about ten. Anyway, while we were waiting for people to get down, Theo would shove us into each other in an effort to speed things up. This only resulted in people getting mad. After we finally got down, it turned out that we had just gone around in a circle for no apparent reason.

To get to the muddy slopes we had to cross a bridge. We had the option of crossing a fairly new and stable one, or running across a wooden one with missing planks. Naturally I decided to cross the sketchy one. At one point I heard a board break as I stepped on it, but I managed to get to the other side alive. For lunch we stopped in a small town where we had almuerzos. The soup that they brought ended up having chicken feet in it. I wasn't sure whether you were supposed to eat them or not, so I took a bite out of one. It did not taste very good. The main course was trout which wasn't too bad.

After collecting a few more rocks we went to the hot springs. They were pretty awesome. I had kind of envisioned them to be carved out of the volcano, but they were more like swimming pools, so that was a bit disappointing. Supposedly to get the full healthy experience out of them, you're supposed to lie down in a freezing river next to them and then jump back into the hot springs. Seven times. The river was really really cold. But I decided to get the full experience so I ended up doing it all seven times. Theo mentioned that they usually had competitions on who could stay in the river the longest, and claimed that girls always won. After hearing this, we ended up having a competition. I was the only guy willing to try it, and then there were three other girls who joined me. Two left fairly early, and then I was stuck in this freezing cold river with the other one who was just as stubborn as me. After fifteen minutes of torture, Theo insisted that we leave as a tie. Apparently the previous record had been two and a half minutes. It was a nice excuse to leave, and the hot baths felt amazing afterwards.

On Sunday we went to Cuicocha. I had already been there with the Boston group so it wasn't all that exciting. We had to draw faults and folds at various stops. We ate at a road side restaurant thing that was terrible. I ordered empanadas and got some tiny cold ones in a container so that was abysmal. I would have preferred chicken feet. One exciting thing I did see was in a remote little village we drove by was an Ecuadorian with a Bayer Leverkusen jersey so that was pretty cool for me. I had thought that I was the only fan outside of Leverkusen, but apparently there's at least one in a small Ecuadorian town.




One of many slopes we had to climb

Most awesome bridge in the world

Lunch

A volcano whose name starts with A. I don't remember the rest.