The Best for Last???

Our drive Friday night to Otavalo was smooth, fog-free (thank goodness!), and completed in under two hours. The innkeeper here greeted our bus as we pulled into the driveway and personally took us to our large, comfortable rooms. This hotel, we are convinced, was a former monastery; not that we have any proof of that, but the Spanish architecture and layout of the gardens reminded us of such surroundings.

We arrived after ten o'clock, but one of our main focuses throughout the trip has been making sure all of us have plenty of bottled drinking water and with all of the traveling in the past two days, we didn't have much time to find a small market to replenish our supply. Once we put our suitcases into our rooms and met as a team to make a shopping plan in the market for Saturday morning, eight of us went in search of a late night market to buy water and snacks. We found one several blocks away, made our vital purchases (which of course included the sugar waffle cookies we are all addicted to on this trip!), and head back to the hotel for a comfortable night's sleep.

Morning showers allowed all of us to discover that the hot and cold faucets were reversed in this hotel, but once we found the hot water, it was tough to get out of the warm shower; Otavalo at 10,000 feet above sea level was quite cool in the morning and as far as I could find, the room had no actual heater so it was a bit chilly for a while.

We all met for breakfast together in the dining room at 8:30 and it was the same standard meal we'd enjoyed all week--fresh tropical fruit, eggs cooked to our preference, bread, and juice and/or coffee with milk. Once we had checked out and stored our luggage in the bus, we walked to the HUGE market set up in the town, spread out for blocks. Hundreds and hundreds of vendors sold clothing, jewelry, food, spices, paintings, sculptures, you name it. I am sure we walked by only a fraction of the market in the two and a half hours we wandered and shopped. After finishing most of our shopping, we met in a pie shop that other volunteers at the clinic had raved about; most of us ordered their trademark blackberry pie with ice cream, but A.J. ordered apple and Alex ordered chocolate. Needless to say, most of us had to exchange bites! (And we wonder why germs flew through the team!!! Between that and sharing water bottles! I guess Grow will have to prohibit future teams from being so close and generous! LOL!)

Several wanted to buy soccer shirts as souvenirs, so on the way back to the hotel we all stopped at that booth and bartered until everyone was satisfied with the price. However, once we turned to continue our walk back and had gone about a block, we realized Adam and Olivia were not with us! After we checked at the hotel to make sure they weren't already there, we made a plan orchestrated by Alex, fanned out over several streets, and found them quickly!

The bus made short work of the drive back to Quito; I think we arrived at our hotel for the night (the same as our first night) in under two hours. We dropped off luggage, ordered a taxi to take us to Old Quito, and enjoyed a wonderful couple of hours with a personable driver who acted as tour guide rather than just drop us off and leave us to our own devices. He even took us to a gorgeous restaurant that overlooked much of Quito; it was a stunning view of the city that we just couldn't get enough of as we ordered and ate our dinner and celebrated an incredible week together.

Our final team meeting reinforced for all of us just how much a highlight this trip to Ecuador has been in each of our lives and how close we grew as a team. While meetings are definitely NOT a highlight for any of us in our working lives, in some ways these team meetings are as inspirational as the actual work we do during the week; I guess any kind of reflection can provide that kind of emotional support. But a very early (three a.m.!) wake-up call was in most of our futures (except maybe for some of the guys who can leap out of bed 10 minutes before leaving on the bus at 4 a.m.), so we retired early (well, by Grow standards, since everyone was in their rooms packing by 10:30). The flights home were comfortable, and the day was a long one, but we fit in more card games of Hearts, more heart-to-heart discussions, and a few last jokes at each others' expense. A final team dinner in Phoenix at Fajitas with our family members was just one more great time to add to our memory boxes.

Needless to say, we can't wait for the opportunity to contribute in some way again next summer!