Making Other Arrangements

M. hobbled into the room "Bad news" he said, "I just turned my ankle." I returned to the dining room where the staff was still cleaning up after dinner and somehow managed, through spanglish and mime to get ice in a plastic bag. The next two days of our trek we replaced hiking with pick-up rides and waited to see how bad the sprain was.

And so we found ourselves on the plaza in Zumbagua making other arrangements.

I remember a similar sense of opportunity as I sat on the platform at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia as a 16 year old. When the airport train pulled into the station, I realized I could go anywhere. And while we were hugely dissapointed to be turning away from a trek that would have taken us across a remote section of high paramo, through a vicuña reserve (vicuña are llamas' wild cousins) and over the shoulder of Chimborazo, the volcano whose summit, due to the bulge at the earth's equator, is further from the center of the earth than any other, we were also full of opportunity.

Were should we spend our last ten days? Find a last-minute deal for the Galapagos? Explore the islands and Marine Reserve at Machalilla National Park? Head over to the hot springs ad day hikes at Baños?

It was Cuenca that called, and so we climbed to the Panamerican and boarded a bus south, heading south to Ecuador's third largest, and by many accounts, most beautiful city and the adjacent Parque National Cajas.