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When Ryan asked me where I most wanted to go in South America, the answer was easy.  I chose to visit Argentina because of the Tango.  I was first introduced to this seductive dance in college and somehow continued to study the Argentine Tango for the next seven years, in Idaho, Washington, and Montana (of all places).  That’s a good amount of time to spend kindling a dream and when I actually found myself sitting at a table with my husband and our friend Justin in the back room of a restaurant in Mendoza, Argentina watching some beautiful Tango, I was not disappointed.  I was THRILLED.

I quickly learned many things that night.  The first was that the show we were watching was not a show at all.  We had unknowingly wandered into a Milonga, which is like a social dance event.  We hid in our casual wear behind our table on the corner of the dance floor as beautifully dressed women at the tables around us changed into strappy heels.  Sharp dressed men crossed the room to kiss the cheeks of both men and women they were previously acquainted with.  Then, entire tables cleared all around us, venturing out onto the dance floor to stalk gracefully to the slow and sensual music.

The second thing I learned was that I had grossly misjudged the power of the romper back in Chile.  The romper is a shorts version of the notorious jumpsuit I mentioned in a previous post (Lost in the Big City).  One of the major problems I had with the jumpsuits in Chile was that the women wearing them were not often (if ever) lean mean machines.  The woman wearing the romper at the Milonga however, was completely captivating.  She had legs for days and a smart and sophisticated haircut.  Every time she was steered near our table, I found myself stealing glances to see just how far up her shorts I could actually see.  God love the romper.

I  became deeply bothered by my t-shirt and jeans which up until then, I had been hiding behind our table.  Suddenly, like Cinderella I was off, keeping to the edge of the dance floor and the shadows until I had escaped the building.  My tennis shoes pounded the pavement until, five minutes later, I reached our apartment and was saved by the elevator.  Within ten minutes I was back on the streets, holding up my long black skirt as my sandals slapped the pavement.  The woman minding the door of the restaurant smiled at me knowingly as I reentered the Milonga in a new state of grace and refinement.  Ryan looked bewildered when I rejoined our table and slipped on strappy black heels of my own.  And then, with the kind courtesy of two older gentlemen who seemed to sense my yearning desire to participate, I danced the Argentine Tango for real.  To my relief, although it had been four years since I’d last had a go at the dance, my feet never stopped moving.  And I couldn’t stop smiling.

Viña del Mar (population 290,000) is a ten minute train ride from the port city of Valparaiso, Chile.  Clean and orderly with horse drawn buggies and restaurants lining manicured boulevards, Viña del Mar is definitely my kind of place.  After having been in the dry hot climate of Santiago for almost two months, the salty sea breeze felt fantastically refreshing.

Ryan, Justin and I spent most of the day walking along the beach.  The water was surprisingly cold on our feet and the beaches were not crowded in the morning.  We slipped into a restaurant about a block off the beach and tried some very good shrimp and crab risotto.  Ryan ordered squid cooked in its own ink which tasted surprisingly good despite the odd purplish-black color.

After lunch we returned to the beach to find a very different picture from that morning.  Children scurried along with their plastic buckets and waders braved the chilly waters as far as the eye could see.  Happy groups sat socializing on towels drinking Yerba mate tea.    Stray dogs basked in the sun, sinking into the cool holes they’d dug to escape the mid-afternoon heat.

It was a wonderfully relaxing day and we spent hours walking the length of the beach.  When our feet had grown tired of trudging through sand, we rested on some bleachers and watched a few local volleyball matches.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.  I would go back to Viña del Mar any day, just to soak up some sun and feel the salty sea breeze toss my hair.

When we decided on a quick weekend getaway to leave the scorching Santiago sun behind, I was elated to find the Chilean buses to be far superior to the Ecuadorian buses.  Ryan and I, along with our friend Justin, took a two hour bus ride up to Valparaiso, Chile and enjoyed a very comfortable, air-conditioned ride along the way.  For those of you who know me, this means that I slept well.

On arrival in Valparaiso, I was once again pleasantly surprised to find that the salty sea breeze of the port city was cool and refreshing and required the occasional use of a sweatshirt, which I had not brought or even unpacked since we’d arrived in Chile.  Luckily for me, Valparaiso is a relatively small city of about 283,000 people and finding a shopping center was surprisingly easy, even for tourists such as ourselves.  Properly clad, I was ready to explore the city.

Being a port city, Valparaiso definitely gives off a touristy type of vibe.  It is crowded and noisy and often smells of pot.  It is also dirtier than Santiago.  That being said, it holds more of a charm.  I found Valparaiso to be a maze of chaotic streets, alleys and stairways all situated on the slopes of steep hillsides lined with restaurants and bars.  The buildings are colorful and crumbling and often covered with impressive mural paintings.

While in search of dinner, we stumbled across a store owned by a French artist who sold gum bichromate wall hangings.  The piece on display in the window was what initially caught my eye.  A black and white printed picture of a man and dog passing each other on the street, each on their own path, each content to go his separate way.  This picture definitely captured the dog scene in Chile, which has been one of my favorite aspects of traveling thus far.  I emerged from the store with a smaller version of the picture in the window.  It was my first South American souvenir and it was rolled and ready for travel.

It is very easy to get lost in Santiago, Chile which has 6.3 million people.  For two urban Wyoming kids, this is pretty huge.  The interesting thing is, that once you get lost in the oddly designed streets of this city, it doesn’t necessarily feel like you are lost in Chile.  Forgetting the obvious language barrier for a moment and the sure knowledge that all the signs are written in Spanish, Santiago could seem like any other city.

So, once lost, here are some initial observations.  First, you will know that you are in the desert.  The ninety degree sun beating down onto your bare shoulders will settle this.  If not, look around and try to find a tree that isn’t in a park.  In addition, it appears that you are stuck in a bowl with bare-looking mountains all around.  You should not feel too bad, when you fail to realize from this distance, that these are the Andes.

While the air in Ecuador smelled of bread, the air on the streets of Santiago smells of cigarette smoke, garbage, piss, or fish (if you are near Mercado Central).  It may seem odd to have access to such excellent fresh fish in this apparently dry place, but there it is, every kind imaginable, stacked in neat rows of fishy stench among its spiky and tentacley cousins.

If one does not go for seafood (and this would be a shame), there are a lot of hot dogs bursting with more mayo and avocado than a person could ask for.  The food is generally very hearty, with corn and meat pies (pastel de choclo) and plates of fries infused with steak, onion and fried egg (chorrillana).  There is obviously a heavy influence of German cuisine and beer along with the more native (and super yummy) pisco sour.

Italiano

Pastel de choclo

Chorrillana

Kros Golden Ale and Pisco Sour

Back on the streets, you will likely blend in fairly well.  People of every shape and size and color are out and about wearing terrible ballooning parachute pants or jumps suits.  Young attractive women may be seen in tall-wasted shorts and belly shirts.  The more you wander, the more likely you will be joined by a wandering dog or two.  One thing to note is that they generally look very healthy and are often Lab crosses or German Shepherds who look much like the police dogs accompanying their officers around the city.

Follow the liberated dog long enough and you will eventually wind up in a park.  At last, there will be shade provided by an abundance of trees.  Dirt paths meander their way around fountains and playground equipment.  The local law has since abandoned their big beautiful dogs and taken up a mounted steeds.  They will sit in their line of big Warm Bloods in their tall black riding boots looking serious and severe.  Out of the corner of your eye, the dog, homeless as it appears to be, climbs into a little house built just for him.  He is not homeless after all, nor are you lost.  You are in the park and your home (at least for the moment) is right over there, waiting.

Tungurahua Volcano

Banos, Ecuador

It has to be said that Banos, Ecuador is one of the most adventurous places a person can visit.  For starters, it’s a city of about 13,000 people nestled in the jungle at the foot of an active volcano (Tungurahua).  While we only spent two weeks there, they were the most adventure-packed fourteen days a person could ask for.

Biking

Let me just say, Ryan on a motorcycle…Oh Yeah!  He climbed on top of that wild machine, revved up the engine, and I thought, “Wow.”  With my helmet mostly strapped securely in place (they didn’t have a child-sized one), I climbed on behind him.  We spent the next four hours driving along “La Ruta de las Cascades” (the Highway of the Waterfalls).  Ther are nineteen waterfalls along this route.  The biggest and most amazing waterfall (Pailon del Diablo) actually allowed us to crawl through a tunnel behind it.  Although we had climbed into our raincoats beforehand, we were still fairly misted by the time we had taken our pictures and crawled back out again.  Very cool.

Eating

The restaurant serving the best and most inexpensive almuerzo (set lunch) was called Casa Hood.  It showed free movies every Tuesday and even offered yoga classes.  The only catch was that the almuerzo was always vegetarian.  This was definitely new for two country bumpkins from Wyoming.  For dinner, we mostly frequented the pizza cones at Conopizza beneath our apartment, which I quickly grew to appreciate.

No meat for Amanda.  Go vegetarian or go home!

Hiking

Just because you’ve seen one giant statue doesn’t mean that you’ve seen them all.  Ohhhh no!  After we had climbed over 600 steps to look upon the statue of the lovely La Virgen del Agua Santa (Mirador de la Virgen del Agua Santa), the very next day we climbed to the top of Bellavista, which is a lookout high above Banos, to see a giant cross.  To be fair, both of these vertical treks produced rather impressive views of the city.  Then, one night in the dark,  we again climbed La Virgen anticipating a promising fireworks show.  While there were no fireworks that night, we were right up in the low-drifting clouds.  Watching them mystically pass through our faces was defiantly worth the walk.

Mirador de la Virgen del Agua Santa

Tungurahua Volcano

Zip Lining

Deep in the heart of the jungle, up a dreadfully winding road and apparently adjacent to a lovely older lady’s property, Ryan and I had our first Zip Lining experience.  After the first one, in which I almost puked, I became a real pro, flying through the air upside down and superman style, banging on my chest and giving a credible George of the Jungle impression.  There were six zip lines in total and we both were very happy with the expedition.

Ryan, all set

Laundry

All of these feverish outdoor activities will make a person quite rough around the edges.  And to wash our soiled and smudged clothing we heroically turned to our giant bath tub, which initially wasn’t good for much else.  If we thought washing our clothes in the tub was hard, we had another thing coming.  When it came to bathing, I found myself submerged in only three to four inches of lukewarm water splashing around like a seal every time I turned over.  Ryan did not fare much better for there was no shower curtain and I’d spend a good deal of time mopping up after one of his showers.  Eventually though, we got the hang of things.  Ryan was able to adjust our water heater, thus providing me with a full, hot tub of water in which to soak my sore bones.  Thus, I regained my dignity.  In addition, we found a local laundry service that charged by the pound.

Rappelling

Shifty tub washing?   Well, have no fear.  Whatever traces of shoot or smudge remaining were sure to be removed once we…wait for it…climbed down rushing waterfalls.  Oh yes, we did indeed challenge the mighty falling water and mostly arrived unscathed.  And ok, you were right.  We were wearing very unattractive wet suits, for in any true adventure, sacrifices must be made.  I wore a smelly rubber seal suit, tasted fear, and had a truly marvelous time.

Swinging

After the sweaty wet suit shenanigans, we needed another romantic motorcycle ride.  This time we took it all the way up to La Casa del Arbol where we sailed out over the edge of the mountain on long roped swings and contemplated the fear of falling and the pain of sudden death.  Talk about an adrenaline rush.  Weeeee!

La Casa del Arbol

Monkeys!

If one takes an uncomfortable two-hour bus ride, they might reach Puyo where they will be dumped by the side of the road (this is kind of a big thing in Ecuador).  From here, a taxi will magically appear to drive them to the Puyo Animal Rescue.  Don’t be fooled by the name folks, because this is all about the monkeys—five different types of monkeys to be specific.  One look at their furry little faces will make you think that you’ve died and gone to heaven.

The best thing about the Puyo Animal Rescue is that, once these adorable little pet monkeys have been collected from their bored or irresponsible owners and have bonded with other sad stragglers, they are all reintroduced back into the wild as a family.  And they all live happily ever after.  The end.

Our Honored Guests

Ryan and I were able to celebrate Christmas and the New Year the best way imaginable—with family!  Ryan’s parents, Matt and Sheree, flew all the way to Cuenca, Ecuador to visit us for the holidays.  While Matt’s luggage got lost, and I mean LOST, we had a wonderful time and they were troopers.

View from our patio

In anticipation of our honored guests, we had moved to a bigger apartment with a great view which we all enjoyed by sitting on our patio, playing Spades and drinking Chardonnay, Boone’s Farm and Pilsner Grande.

Don’t think Ryan won this hand…

Matt and his BIG beer

During the day, we took them to see all of our favorite sights and even discovered some new ones, like the Inca Ruins of Pumapungo.

We took them back to Cajas National Park and this time, I kept my lunch down.  Ryan climbed Devil’s Peak (I really need to figure out what that mountain is actually called) all by himself.  Sheree wandered off to get a better vantage point and I spent most of the time serenading my father-in-law with the best of Broadway.  Once again, Matt was a great sport, even though he was wearing some of Ryan’s clothes.

On Christmas Eve, we bought and decorated a Christmas tree which I named Felix.  We ate a seven course meal called The Feast of Seven Fishes at Joe’s Secret Garden.  Joe’s is a wonderfully unique establishment that is only open on Saturday night.  The meal changes every week and is mostly frequented by expatriates.  It is an older, jovial crowd.  In fact, the meal is always kicked-off with cocktails and a social hour.

Felix

Christmas Dinner at Don Calon

We enjoyed the food (and company) at Joe’s so much that we returned for New Years.  This time we were served an array of appetizers, lomo fino wrapped around shrimp is a creamy sauce, and cherries jubilee pie.  Everyone was given a skewer of green grapes which we were instructed to eat during the twelve tolls of the new hour (one grape per second) making a wish on each one.  Incidentally, this did not actually occur at midnight (as is generally the tradition) but before our meal as we were amongst a retired crowd.  Besides, it was midnight somewhere.  Indeed, our host Joe pointed out that in fact, at that very time (which, I believe, was around 7pm), it was midnight in Greenwich London and that was good enough for us.

What our jovial crowd may have been lacking in youth, they certainly made up for in enthusiasm.  And it was a good thing, for little did they know, a great surprise was in store for them.  After dinner I excused myself from my family and snuck into the back yard with two of my table mates where we commenced to change into our performance clothes.  The guests were beckoned outside and right there in the street (stopping traffic at one point) the Cuenca Dance Mob put on a vigorous performance to “Hot Stuff.”

After the show we lit the effigies on fire.  These are life-sized, scarecrow-looking things.  The idea behind this tradition is really quite clever.  You choose someone you bare a grudge against and create an effigy in their image.  Then you write a note to that person, slip it inside, and light it on fire.  In doing this, you are lifted of your burden and begin the New Year fresh.  But only after you jump across the pile of ashes twelve times, which Sheree and I did (at least twice).  By then, we had both consumed enough wine that Ryan looked on in disapproval at our potentially dangerous shenanigans.

Although we left Joe’s shortly after, our night wasn’t over.  We returned to our apartment and sat out on the patio watching the most amazing fireworks display I’ve ever seen.  It started at Midnight and lasted well into the night.  Every neighborhood, it would seem, had their own show.  So instead of one grandiose show, there were smaller shows scattered across the whole city.  It was quite the sight and we had fantastic seats.  Most of all, we had fantastic company.  Thank you Matt and Sheree for making our holidays unforgettable.

This year, to celebrate Christmas, I have joined the Cuenca Dance Mob.  They meet every Tuesday at 4pm at Café Eucalyptus.  Joined by about a dozen enthusiastic expats aging fifty years and above, we have been jamming it up to Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas Is You.”

Dance Mob, I have found, is serious business.  We pay a dollar admission (for returning members only) and wear matching red sparkly scarves.  If you’re new to the Cuenca Dance Mob, five dollars will get you into your first lesson and twenty dollars will apparently pay for an entire month’s session.

Cuenca Dance Mob at Cafe Eucalyptus

Most of our members are from Texas or Tennessee.  They come early or late, sitting along the sides in chairs to rest their knees when they get too tired, while the rest of us get our sweat on.  And we do sweat, people, jumping in line to do the can-can, the Macarena and my favorite, the sexy circle.

Our instructor David is a real hoot.  “Sexy circle,” he yells.  “Give them sex now.”  As a younger man, he specialized in law and disco.  Now he coordinates and facilitates all the routines for the Cuenca Dance Mob.  He is fairly strict, leading us out on the floor for nearly forty-five minutes before we are entitled to a break.  I have noticed that I am the only one who wanders downstairs for my weekly mojito—scrumptious things—and Barbara, with pink strokes in her hair laughs every time I return carrying my prize, right in time to “take it from the top.”

All I Want For Christmas Is You

I’m not going to lie, when I mastered that last move and was chosen by David to be one of his two “Dance Babes” (stage left) I was thrilled.  When it comes to dance, I never get chosen for anything!  It was the roller-coaster move that was giving me fits, but I mastered a slightly modified version of the move and that was okay with David.

I was growing fairly nervous as the date approached for my first actual flash dance.  David asked us all to meet early on Friday morning at the Mall del Rio where we would be performing up on stage later that afternoon.  He had very cleverly managed to finagle a spot right after the International Choir of Cuenca were to perform, so the seats were supposed to be packed.

Mall del Rio

We got to the mall so early (9:30) that no one would let us in.  With our limited Spanish, Ryan and I had no way of telling the security guards (though not for lack of trying) that we had to come early for a very important rehearsal.  Luckily we found David and we followed him around the premises until he could convince one of the guards to let us in to ensayar.

At last, our group was granted admission.  “Where are my dance babes?” David called.  “I need to pull them up on the stage first.  Is everyone ready?”  Trust me, we were.  About ten hours later, our performance (though slightly flawed) seemed to have been enjoyed by all and was much more popular, if I may be so bold as to say, then the International Choir of Cuenca.

Judy, Barbara, Kathy, Amanda, David, Dale and Deborah

I’m going to be completely honest.  On the morning of November 27^th, I woke up in Cuenca, Ecuador and had no idea that it was Thanksgiving.  Ryan had gone out an hour earlier and came back with some orange tiger lilies.  When he presented them to me saying, “Today I am thankful for you,” I thought, Hey, how sweet.  Then he laughed and said, you really don’t know what day it is, do you?

I spent the remainder of the day writing about being attacked by a turkey.  You see, this did in fact happen, on a lonely little road in Wyoming called Zig Zag that was a beast whenever wet.  My book–about family and friends back home–was coming along smashingly well and so I followed “Turkey Attack” with a chapter called “Family Feast,” which I later deleted and rewrote.  The truth was, I was sooo thankful to get to spend the day writing.

We went to dinner at my favorite restaurant which is called Don Colon’s International Café.  Once seated for our seven o’clock reservation, we were served an amazing sangria, along with a steaming plate of turkey, dressing, sweet potato, and green beans.  The desert was a sort of pound cake with strawberries—nowhere near sufficient to curb this woman’s Thanksgiving appetite, and so Ryan took me to my other favorite restaurant and ordered an entire pitcher of sangria.  There I got to choose from two pages of fabulous deserts.

The result, I’m displeased to report, was sour stomach.  I ate so much at La Fornace that I became physically ill.  Not the sort of Thanksgiving ill where you just put on some sweatpants and lay down for thirty minutes and go back for another round of pumpkin pie, but the kind of ill where I groaned and said, “Please take me home right now!”  The kind of ill where I stumbled home nauseously and went right to bed.  What a sad way to end that beautiful Thanksgiving evening.  Luckily, I still remembered to roll over, pat Ryan on the arm and mumble, “I’m thankful for you.  I’m thankful for our exotic adventure,” before falling fast asleep.  I may have rolled over once during the night, but that was about it.

Ryan must have felt pretty bad after the Cajas elevation sickness ordeal because the next day we caught a bus and rode about thirty minutes to Banos.  This is the smaller Banos at the outskirts of the city known for it’s amazing and restorative hot springs.

Church in Banos

Piedra de Agua is one of the nicest spas in Banos, offering a broad range of skin treatments, massages, and thermal pools. The early morning special runs from 6-8am and grants access to all of the following for $15 per person: steam baths, red and blue volcanic pools, underground thermal pools, box steam baths, relaxation terrace and thermal pools.

We had a nice young man who spoke fairly good English supervise the process.  After we had changed into our bathing suits and settled our belongings into a locker, he directed us toward the steam bath, which was essentially a VERY HOT steam room.  The room was so hot, in fact that we were not able to stay for the ten minutes he’d instructed.  Luckily we were the only patrons present and so we snuck in and out of the room every few minutes.  My contacts quickly became useless and I somehow burned my nose and throat in the process.  But we were in good spirits, laughing as I bumped into things on my way in and out of the room.

I looked like a drowned rat by the time he came to collect us.  Makeup, modest as it was, had apparently been a poor choice but the cold shower we jumped into next took care of the black streaks running down my cheeks.  It was only after I had done a fair amount of frantic scrubbing that the attendant asked us not to submerge our heads.  Ooops.

He escorted us to the red volcanic pool and half explained, half mimed, rubbing red grainy dirt in clay bowls all over our bodies.  If we had been laughing in the steam room, we were really laughing now, half submerged in red water, rubbing mud onto each other’s backs and smearing it all over our cheeks and chests.  The mud had to dry, and so, for another ten to fifteen minutes, we lounged in chairs in the sun, baking the mud onto our bodies and becoming more and more immobile as our skin hardened.

Volcanic Red Mud Pool

The attendant herded us to two clay huts that turned out to be showers.  I wasn’t sure how long I was supposed to stay in there so when I came out, about five minutes later, Ryan was already in the blue volcanic pool, repeating the ritual with blue mud.

More smearing, more baking, and more showers and we wandered down into a dark cave to find two underground thermal pools.  One warm and one cold.  We were instructed to stay in the warm pool for ten minutes, then move to the cold pool for a few minutes and then repeat the process.  Soft instrumental music played in the background and the air smelled strongly of earth and the burning vanilla candles lighting the stone steps.

The first dunk into the cold pool–and a dunk is exactly what it was–shocked all my senses.  I didn’t even submerge all the way.  When I crawled back into the warm pool, my entire body tingled.  The next dunk I took more seriously, submerging up to my neck and sitting for at least thirty seconds, hoping to entice an even greater tingle from the next round.  Although I did achieve a great tingle when I jumped back into the warm pool, we were apparently supposed to end on the cold dunk and so we were both sent back into the cave to dunk again.

Big Guy in a Little Robe

My yellow bathrobe was a welcome sight on our return.   Ryan’s was much too small and I laughed at him all the way to the next room that contained the steam boxes.  I shed my bathrobe and crawled in, allowing our attendant to fold the boards down around me, sealing me in.  He wrapped a towel around my neck to keep any steam from escaping and I laughed at Ryan trying to escape from his bathrobe.  It kept getting stuck over his forearms.  I was grateful that the temperature of each box could be controlled by a small lever found inside, otherwise, I would have fried.  We both sat happily through two rounds and when we were finished and had taken our cold showers, we were brought two glasses of bright pink tea.

Box Steam Baths

We lounged by the open thermal pools after that and I fell asleep in the sun.  When Ryan woke me, thirty or forty minutes later, we enjoyed lunch by the pool from the spa’s Dragonfly restaurant.  I had a mango milkshake and some kind of steak with mushrooms.  Ryan had a shrimp dish.  By the time we left the spa we were both burnt to a crisp but our spirits were soaring.  We have been happily peeling ever since.

Cajas National Park is only a sixty minute bus ride from Cuenca.  Ryan had read that it is best to visit the park early in the day, to avoid the mist which will impede the view.  So we got up at 5:30 am (earliest alarm to date) and took a taxi to the bus terminal.  Once there, we watched the pigeons and kept trying to get on the wrong bus.  Luckily, the drivers kept us in line.  There was one particular driver who wagged his finger at us as soon as he saw us approaching, saying “No no no (with a bunch of other mystery words).  His message was clear enough however, and we waited for another bus.

The third bus was the ticket and it was good that we waited because OUR bus was very nice, more like a Greyhound, with reclining seats and individual air vents.  I immediately relaxed, as controlling my temperature is the first step in controlling my issues with motion sickness.  The terrain on our way out of the city became lush and green.  The towns (or neighborhoods?) grew smaller and smaller.  The hilly landscape opened to reveal countryside much like that of the kingdom of Rohan, in the Lord of the Rings.

We were dumped beside the road with a small walk down the hill to the visitor center.  As usual, Ryan had done his research and knew that we needed to check in at the office.  We told the woman (the best we could) that we were intending to take Route 2 which is estimated to take around five hours and ascends a mountain up to 14,000 feet to afford the best view.

A restroom break and we were off, removing layers as we went.  The early air was cool and the morning sun was shy, darting in and out of cloud coverage.  Route 2, marked in green paint on rocks and planks, branches from Route 1 (the easier trek) marked in pink about twenty minutes down the trail.  I was in high spirits, galloping about, pretending I was a stout dwarf or a lean cool elf entering Rohan for the first time, on a quest.  The mountain we would soon be ascending loomed before us along with a sign that read, Ruta 2 Muy Dificil.

I proposed we make a short video for friends back home, pretending to apply that magical Agua de Florida, which aids in preventing altitude sickness.  You pour the oily liquid into your palms, quickly rub and clap them together three times, bring them to your face and breath in the citrusy, spicy aroma.  Then you run your hands up over your head, brushing the remaining fragrance into your hair.  After all, it had worked for us in the Andes and 14,000 feet was nothing to take lightly.

Ryan wasn’t thrilled with the idea about the video so we began to climb instead, slowly yet steadily following those often hidden green trail markers.  The mountainside, step as steps, rose and opened before us.  Slowly and steadily we continued on, breathing heavily until I suddenly lurched to the side of the trail, vomiting into the brush.

“It’s okay,” I told Ryan, a few minutes later.  “I actually feel much better now.”  At his insistence we walked more slowly and took more frequent breaks, climbing higher and higher until…”I have to sit down!” I said.  I was dizzy and nauseous all over again.  I sat with my head in my hands until my stomach lurched without warning and I was up, tramping through the high brush off the trail, out of sight until I could find a more private place to drop my drawers.  I was sick again, but this time, it was not nausea.

We went down after that.  I tried to continue on, following the pink markers of Route 1 but I didn’t make it very far before I began to feel dizzy and nauseous again.  It was clear that there was only one thing to do after that.  I felt defeated on the way back to the visitor’s center, although I did begin to feel much better.  We passed an adorable group of school children on the way who greeted us cheerfully in English.  “Hello!  Hi!” they said excitedly.  We even found a short-eared rabbit to watch for a while and I convinced Ryan to let me make a video of him munching.

The restaurant was open when we got back, even though it was only quarter til eleven.  We each ordered fish.  My trout was fried and his was dressed in garlic from head to fin.  (His was better.)  Two steamy glasses of rich dark chocolate and my spirits were nearly restored.  We sat in silence taking in the restaurant’s beautiful view of the park and the lake below.  And further out, that mountain–I decided to call it Devils Peak–that had chewed me up and spat me back out.