{"id":132,"date":"2008-02-02T21:24:25","date_gmt":"2008-02-03T02:24:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=132"},"modified":"2014-12-29T20:37:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T02:37:08","slug":"back-in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/?p=132","title":{"rendered":"Back in DC"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After flying all night from Quito, we made it home to DC before noon today – we were so happy to see our cats! They have gotten a lot of lap time in this afternoon – I think they missed us, too.<\/p>\n

We spent the weekend in Papallacta, which is near a volcano and famous for its hot water. We stayed at Termas Papallacta<\/a> in a nice little cabina <\/a>and enjoyed the spa. We got the strangest treatment – they call it a “deep massage with thermal water.” I called it water torture. They put you in a large shower, and a woman stands behind a wall of plexiglass and shoots water all over your body with a fire hose. No joke. It was humiliating and funny and, yes, enjoyable, all at the same time! I don’t think I have laughed so hard in a long, long time, which was probably more therapeutic than the treatment. The funny thing was that the woman wanted to chit-chat while this was going on, asking me where I was from, how old I was, etc. After that, we had body wraps with Andean mud and massages – all in all, it was a really good time! The rest of the weekend, we just read, hiked and studied – very relaxing and a good break from the noise and auto exhaust of Quito.<\/p>\n

Monday night we visited with our friend Bo from our A-100 class. It was great to see him (and his cool apartment), and to hear about his work in the Embassy. He took us to a neat Greek restaurant with great food and a wonderful view of the city.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, we went on an outing to the equator, about an hour and a half outside of the city. There’s a very touristy little park <\/a>with a museum (about what you would expect). But then, we went to another little museum <\/a>that was fun – you can do different experiments, like watching water swirl <\/a>in different directions in the different hemispheres.<\/p>\n

Have I mentioned that there are casinos in Quito? Hmmm, well, there just happened to be one near our hotel, so we gambled a couple of nights – it’s great because the blackjack tables have a $2 minimum, so you don’t have to be a high roller. Both nights, we had good tables and enjoyed ourselves (and won!).<\/p>\n

Another afternoon, I had a facial and some other stuff done at a local beauty shop, so we really did a good job of immersing ourselves. We also spoke only Spanish to each other, which we hope to continue back here in DC, just to keep up the practice.<\/p>\n

OK, back to petting cats…here are a few photos from our trip. You can see the full set in this Picasa album<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The view from our cabina at Papallacta<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Here’s looking at you<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After flying all night from Quito, we made it home to DC before noon today – we were so happy to see our cats! They have gotten a lot of lap time in this afternoon – I think they missed us, too. We spent the weekend in Papallacta, which is near a volcano and famous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3721,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/3721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.criplomats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}