Last Saturday I lifted my trusty SWEET pen to my life’s to-do list and, with great gusto, checked off item twenty-seven: jump off a bridge. Indeed, during a leisurely bike ride through the Andes, some friends and I took a short break to take turns diving dolphin-style off el Puente de Rio Blanco – the bridge of the White River.
My courage surprised me. When my friend first said, “Hey, what do you say to jumping off a bridge?” I immediately envisioned myself screaming, crying and having some employee toss me over the ledge just to shut me up. I also foresaw some fear-induced urination happening in my shorts. But, what luck! I befriended the men that squeezed me into the harness, found some latent Wonder Woman prowess, and dove like an Olympian. The rush was fantastic. And the total cost? Ten dollars.
Leaping off the bridge wasn’t the only activity of the weekend, of course. The actual reason behind the weekend trip was to bike the route from Baños to Puyo, two cities south of Quito. We hopped on our bikes around 11 a.m. and had to stop pedaling just minutes later to admire the landscape. We were biking in the Andes! No photo could ever do justice to the majesty.
Luckily for our quadriceps, the ride was downhill. We cascaded through the never-ending green for hours. We paused only twice: first for the bridge and second for La Cascada Machay – the Machay waterfall. Once again, the waterfall’s beauty could never, ever truly be captured in a picture.
To reach it, we paid a dollar and descended about a million steps. It was worth it. We stumbled to the bottom of the stairs and beheld a celestial intertwining of monstrous, crashing waterfall and the delicate elegance of a rainbow. I had to stop and question, “Wait, am I in Ecuador right now … or am I dead? Is this heaven?” The freezing mist, however, brought me back to reality.
By the time the Saturday sun began to disappear behind the range, my adrenaline was spent. I couldn’t even muster the oomph to explore the streets, let alone show my stuff at the town’s raging Club Leprechaun; and even though I felt like a boring old hag, I took to my bed around 10 p.m.
Sunday held a five-hour return bus ride to Quito. During that time, I finished knitting a scarf and reflected lazily upon the previous day and my trip thus far. My thoughts drifted back to spring and early summer: What exactly had I expected to do during this semester abroad? What, back in the spring, did I expect to experience here? I anticipated an improvement in my Spanish, sure. But what else?
I’ve discovered that this semester is more than just a five-month vacation. It is a break from reality, yes, but one consisting of more than lounging on a beach sipping daiquiris and occasionally attending a class. There are highs and lows, moments of elation and others in which I fear I’ll pee myself. The experience abroad is extremely personal.
You could read my column every week, study friends’ blogs, scour the internet daily and still not understand what “going abroad” really means until you’ve done it yourself. It’s more than jumping off bridges – it’s the feeling beforehand of your heart in your mouth and the glowing pride afterward when you can say, “Holy crap, I did it!” It’s the utter confusion you endure when, on a public bus full of families and children, a horrifyingly violent movie starts playing at a roaring volume. It’s the relentless salivation you suffer when you find, after months of searching, a restaurant that actually serves Supreme Nachos and Pad Thai. And it’s the enchantment of looking up from your feet and seeing that, “Oh, hey; I’m standing in a rainbow.”
Those are merely some of the countless sensations I encountered last weekend. I couldn’t even begin to describe everything I felt during my three days in Baños, let alone my entire time in Ecuador thus far. What I can say, though, is that being abroad is terrifyingly delicious and that you really, really must taste it yourself.
