Volcano?

Last weekend was probably the most exciting weekend I had. On Saturday, I was supposed to go to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador, with my host family, but my host dad had some work to do, and we had to pick up my host grandma, who is such an adorable little lady, from her son's house and drop her off at her niece's. I was kind of bummed because I really wanted to go to Guayaquil, but the day turned out to be cool.

After we dropped off the grandma, we met up with my host cousin's family to get some lunch. We went to a very typical restaurant where they sell typical Ecuadorian food. What, do you ask, is typical Ecuadorian food? Well, usually it's a lot of mote (type of corn), fried meat, and plátanos. We ordered 3 plates of fried pig skin with mote, a plate of fritada (fried pork) with potato pancakes and mote for me, and half a guinea pig for my host uncle. Sweet. And I got to try it!!! I took a picture of it, but accidentally erased it before I could upload it :( sadness. Guinea pig sounds really gross because they're so small and are like pets. But I don't like guinea pigs so I decided to have a piece. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! The skin was super chewy and felt like rubber in my mouth and the meat tasted kind of like fish - i don't know why. I don't know if I'd be able to eat it again, just because I know it's guinea pig. If they had just put a plate full of the meat w/o telling me what it was, I'd probably eat it. Hehe

Then after lunch, we went to the TeleferiQo in Quito, which is a place where you ride those cable cars up to the top of a mountain. But it was really cloudy, and we wouldn't have been able to see anything, so we decided to go to the amusement park right next to it instead called Vulqano. My host family told me that it used to be really big when it first opened, but as the instable weather started interfering with the park's business, less and less people started to go, and shops started to close down. They had to close down a lot of the rides, too, so now it's really small. But there are a few good rides that are still open. There was one that made me really sick; it's like the Viking Boat, but there are two "ships" that go opposite each other, and it also goes all the way around like when you swing a yo-yo. At one point, I thought I was going to fall out of my seat.

There's also another ride that's very similar to the Giant Drop at Six Flags Great America, but not as giant. It was alright. We also went on the Viking..which was very not exciting. There was this ride called Catapult where two people ride in this capsule ball connected to ropes and the machine pretty much just throws them around. It looked really intense.. and I wanted to go on it, but I didn't at the same time. So I didn't :) We also got to go on the bumper cars! It was really exciting because I got to ram into a lot of people that I didn't know. Hehehe

After Vulqano, we were supposed to go to the Centro Histórico de Quito (self-explanatory I think), but it started to rain, so by the time we got there, it was closed. Boo, because I really wanted to go. But I'll be living in the city for three weeks, so I still have time to explore. After being stuck in Quito traffic, which is probably worse than Chicago's I-90/94 traffic, we went home and just chilled :)