Ladies Weekend: Papallacta

In March, I was invited to Papallacta for a ladies weekend with some other teachers from school.  The timing worked out well....it was mid-March Madness....and since I had never been to Papallacta, I quickly accepted the invite.  Papallacta is a small town just outside the Cayambe Ecological Reserve with a higher altitude than Quito.  It's amazing to me that all of Ecuador is roughly the size of the state of Nevada, but traveling to new places often takes a long time as the Andes continually get in our way.  Papallacta is close, but still took us over an hour to climb up into the hills to get there.  I had heard about the town before and knew it was famous for its natural hot springs (both public and private baths) but not much else.  It's always been described as the perfect couples getaway or ladies weekend retreat.  Our little foursome splurged on the nice resort's cabin, that could sleep up to 6 and had its own fireplace.  (Papallacta gets very cold in the evenings!)

This is Wara and Christina, unpacking in our little cabin (the fireplace is behind Wara on the left)

The cabin was very nice and included 6 single beds.

We opted for the 4 beds in the attic so that we could have a little sleepover.

Because we were staying at Termas (it's like the nice hotel in Papallacta) we had access to all of their private baths.  Each of the baths is a different temperature and they have freezing ones available if you want to do the hot to cold to hot thing.

We tried a few out during our weekend, but were happy to stay close to our wine supply in our cabin.

This is the outside of our cabin...you can see how close it was to hop in and soak in the perfectly hot water.

We had a really amazing and relaxing time.  We were there about 24 hours and spent most of them soaking in the steaming pools.  I can see why it's suggested as a couples' getaway; the scenery is quite romantic and there isn't much else to do besides sit in hot water and chat.  It was really nice to go with the ladies though and get to know each of them a bit better.