It's Sunday and we just had to get out of town so we hired a driver to take us to Termas de Papallacta for the day. It's touted as Ecuador's most luxurious hot springs. 

To get there we passed through some cool little towns and somewhere along the way got a view of 5,897 meter (19,347 ft) Cotapaxi, too--one of the highest active volcanoes in the world.

The drive over the pass was really lovely even though the mountains were shrouded in uncompromising clouds and I didn't get to see Volcan Antisana at 18,875 feet. Still, the pass was something to see--that high altiplana is so different from any of our high mountains. Course, we don't have anything that high in Montana--even our mountaintops are lower than this pass.

Papallacta itself sits at 3,300 meters, or 10,827 feet--the highest settlement in Ecuador. Since this road barrels down the mountainside to the Oriente (jungle), I was surprised that we ended up even higher than we started! I don't seem to be able to get away from high altitudes!! Everything we want to see is up on top of the dang mountains, and I mean UP.

The hot springs are lovely, but I wouldn't call them luxurious. Not after seeing the Geometricas Hot Springs in Villarica National Park in Chile or the one in Costa Rica dug out of a mountainside by a father and his 2 sons.

But still, Papallacta is exceptionally clean and well maintained. We had lunch at the on-site restaurant and when the waiter saw I hadn't eaten my soup he quietly took it away and brought me a cup of coca tea--on the house. I didn't know at the time we were at nearly 11,000 feet--no wonder I couldn't eat. I call it my Cusco High Mountain Diet. You get up high enough and you're so sick at your stomach you can't eat anything.

It works. 

If I stayed here long enough I'd look like Kari.