Hi!
I´ve just eaten my body weight in pasta and tomato salad at a local Italian place that I found recommended online here in Latacunga. Which makes me think of 2 things - the internet is really useful, and why do we have so many different weighing systems? I went to Quilotoa lake today with a German couple (Christoph and Irini), who obviouly both spoke perfect English and it was really nice to meet some new people and have some random chat that wasn´t just about where I was going, or where I´d been, or whether I was married etc etc. We were trying to figure out stones / pounds / ounces / kilos, in terms of weighing things. I literally have no idea, and had just recovered from trying to explain to them what a furlong was ha ha (something to do with horse racing....?). Are there 13 pounds in a stone, or 13 ounces in a pound, or both? Or neither? I´m convinced I´ve asked this same question on a South American blog before. Incidentally the lake was about 350m deep in the middle, and 3km in diameter. We walked for approx 2.5 hours, possibly covering 4km. The altitude was 3900m which makes your heart beat approx 3 times faster (some of these statistics are made up but the gist of them is true). I decided not to go to Cotopaxi tomorrow, as it goes to 4800m, which might make my brain explode, and I´ve had my fill of day trips to Andean countryside now.
We also chatted about school systems in England and Germany - in Germany private schools are where you go if you´re rich but a bit thick, kind of the opposite of England. Irini is a teacher and had spent a year in Sunderland of all places as a German teaching assistant. They are here for 3 weeks which seems like nothing when most people you meet are here for 6 months or more. Talking of which, much to my chagrin, I had to talk to some other guests in my hostel this morning at breakfast. I do love hostels, mainly as I love a bargain, and some hostels, like this one, are actually really nice and very well managed and full of information. However, as you know, I don´t like the hostel chat, so I tend to just ignore it / walk off. Someone invited me to sit with them this morning though so I had to go along with it. He was Irish and has been in South America since January and next he´s going t.........
oh sorry I actually just fell asleep on to the computer
So I was very pleasantly surprised to have the day at the lake with a genuinely interesting and friendly couple, who were MY AGE and had similar feelings re hostel chat. I recommended the hostel in Banos that me and Danny had stayed at and also gave them the number to get a taxi safely in Guayaquil, so that´s some good karma saved up for me in terms of useful information. Which is maybe why I just found the nice Italian restaurant, so maybe I´ve already cashed it in. Perhaps in my case my karma is as fast as my metabolism, ie very. Which interestingly reminds me that I recently dreamt about fighting and swords and being a bit scared, and very soon that day had an argument with someone. I also once dreamt that I went back in time and met Paul Mcartney and Ringo Starr on a park bench and they gave me some of their records. I don´t remember what happened that particular day, but definitely not that.
So our driver, Alex, seemed like the last thing he could be bothered doing today was driving 3 Europeans to a lake that he´s probably been to about a million times. On the way back he drove like he was expecting an important phone call and had left his mobile at home, ie too fast, and kept checking his watch. The road was curvy (but so well paved, thanks to the president), and fairly empty, but the few times we veered to the other side on sharp corners, there unfortunately seemed to be large lorries or buses coming towards us. Nothing bad happened, and it turned out he had in fact left his mobile at home. Anyway all that aside, it was really lovely to get out into the hills and countryside and see some typical Andean villages, and typical Andean people, and llamas, and lots of dogs. Which reminds me (this is a very desultory blog, apologies) - yesterday a dog adopted me in the park and followed me round the streets for ages, and it really really stressed me out. Psychologically I can´t explain quite why, but I think it was something to do with fear of responsibility. I honestly thought he was going to be there waiting for me for the next 2 days everywhere I went, and people would start asking why I´d brought a dog to Ecuador with me, and I´d have to start paying for his dog food, and I don´t even like dogs. I tried to shoo him away and I wasn´t remotely moved by his little dog face looking up at me (ok maybe I was a little bit, but the fear of buying dog food outweighed any compassion). I managed to lose him on a corner somewhere and now writng about it I feel a bit bad and hope he´s ok. I then had a small pizza in a totally empty pizza restaurant - it was 4.30 which might explain the emptiness, that´s not exactly pizza time. The man appeared to find it a little bit inconvenient that I wanted to eat a pizza in his pizza restaurant, so perhaps his hostility was my dog karma coming back to get me, which again proves how fast it works.
Whilst walking round part of the lake today, we chatted about Ecuador, and decided that Ecuador is kind of a more grown up version of Peru and Bolivia. It´s kind of slightly more modern and with better infrastructure, and clearly has more money than Peru and Bolivia, but is still of the same origins. We feel that the government here probably has done things a bit more wisely, and involved foreign investment whilst protecting its own resources - perhaps it is a little bit less extreme than the socialist Bolivia under Morales, which kicked out all the foreign NGOs and really tries to limit if not totally ban foreign investment, to the detriment of the mining industry. It´s funny, but whilst I´ve absolutely loved being here, it hasn´t had the kind of effect on me that Peru or Bolivia ever did. This could be because I´m older now, and it´s hard for anything to be as hugely overwhelmingly impressive as it was years ago, or it could be because there is something genuinely different about Ecuador. I don´t feel that I´m in an Incan country, though it definitely is, and whilst everywhere I´ve been is really lovely, none of it has had a `feeling´ as such. I remember first being in Peru, particularly Cuzco for example, and feeling a really strong sense of foreign-ness and fascination at the culture, and that I was inside something very different. Even in Bolivia last year on my very restricted volunteering progamme, I felt I was in a really different place sometimes in terms of culture and landscapre. I can´t explain it very well, and I can´t work out if it´s something in me, or something in Ecuador. The towns and cities I´ve been to here are really nice - Quito´s really great for a capital city, and Banos was really relaxing and surrounded by mountains, and Cuenca was old and colonial, and Guayaquil was totally different and all industrial and more modern. Perhaps there is a limit to how many Plazas you can look at, or statues of independence day heroes, or colonial cobbled streets, and then they all become the same. Or perhaps it is a desire in me to be in one place now, and get to know things on a different level. I suspect it is the latter, and that I am seeing things with different eyes - and it´s not that the things I´m seeing are not beautiful and interesting because they still are.
The other thing of note, to me anyway (and I am in fact the most avid reader of my blog - sometimes I read it back to myself before going to sleep and chuckle at the bits I think are funny) - is that in the last few days I´ve been truly on my own, which is actually the first time since I got here. Because I met Danny and hung out with him in Quito quite a bit, and then in the jungle, and then hung out with Kim in Cuenca and Guayaquil, and then with Danny again in Banos, it wasn´t until Sunday afternoon that I was on my own for the first time properly. Here´s what I noticed being on my own, and looking only with my own eyes - there are loads of shoe shops here in Ecuador, seriously loads, I don´t know what´s going on with that. Lots of men spit on the street. And suddenly taxi drivers / other random men whistle at you, or say ´hola preciosa´as you walk past. And you have to feel a teeny weeny bit awkward when you go to eat somewhere as you´re always on your own, but it´s always fine and I usually sit there writing notes such as these ones that then get turned into a blog. I love that the smallest thing becomes a reason for being really happy, like tonight - finding a place to eat, walking to it, ordering in Spanish, eating (in Spanish), getting the bill and talking to the owner - it gives me such a sense of achievement to do all that all on my own in a really far away country in a foreign language.
Yesterday I had to ask the police for help. This wasn´t as serious as it sounds. Basically the address of the hostel in my out of date guidebook was wrong, and I couldn´t find the hostel anywhere. I wandered up and down some streets getting a little bit stressed as my bag was heavy. Then I saw about 8 armed policeman on a street corner - which at the time didn´t strike me as anything other than extremely fortuitous. I smiled and said buenas tardes, and asked them if they knew where hostel tiana was. One of them said a few English words, like hello, and then some Spanish words, then got on his walkie talkie, then wandered up the street with me, then some random pedestrian got involved and he seemed to know where the hostel was so I followed his instructions and thanked the policeman. Turns out Banco de Sudamerica had gone bankrupt yesterday, and that´s why there were so many armed policemen outside it on that corner, today I walked past and there was a big notice up about all this, and still some policemen around. I´m not sure of the details, but it worked out well for me finding the hostel - that´s an interesting bit of global / financial karma I´ve got saved up, wonder how that will manifest itself - hopefully in an international lottery win.
So then yesterday there was the Garcia Marquez funereal moment, and the man with the missing teeth in the square, and then the dog that adopted me. I saw the man with the missing teeth again today near the square and we had another chat. Or rather he asked me some stuff, and I said some sentences that may or may not have satisfactorily answered his questions. I then went to the laundry to pick up my washing. I had dropped it off yesterday, it was literally just my underwear, and probably weighed not very much (they charge 1 USD per 1 kilo of washing), so I was expecting it to cost 1 USD maximum. They charged me 3 USD because it still had to go in a big machine to be washed. It came back one sock less, so I reckon that´s not a great return rate on investment. It had taken ages to find the laundry so I wasn´t willing to shop around, or go back to get more stuff to wash just for the sake of it.
Anyway, this blog is meant to about the lake, not my underwear. The lake was stunning, a volcanic crater lake. The volcano is still active, but obviously not hugely active - perhaps deep down inside it there is some lava and perhaps one day it will explode again, but for now it´s a lake. I´ll post some pictures from my iphone. It´s very very blue and greeny-blue, and flat as a pancake lake, but with ripples where the wind blows on it. The wind at the top, which is where we were was quite strong too, and I had my 7 layers of clothing on, and gloves that I´d bought in Cuenca at the park with the religious statues and the canelazo. Then I got too hot. Then too cold again. Then out of breath. Then we got to a small area called Shalala. There were a few really new buildings, one was a restaurant-cafe, and one was an artesan museum thing, but it was closed. We had a really really good coffee and wondered what the deal was with us being the only people around that day, and howcome this was the best coffee all 3 of us had had in Ecuador so far.. Shalala, it turns out, is a typical Andean village nearby, but this was the swanky new bit for the tourists. Which, despite the coffee, I could do without, and would rather have seen a traditional village. We did talk to a traditional Andean lady which was nice.
We walked back the way we´d come, with the lake to our right now, still beautiful, and with some small boats on it. On the way there we´d said how nice it would be to see boats on the lake, and now there they were. When we met up with Alex (our driver) again, he said actually they´re only little canoes and not very safe due to the wind on the lake. Oh well, they looked nice from the top of the crater where we were. We had some lunch - soup and omelettes with plantain and rice - then set off back to Latacunga, via the curvy roads and near misses. The Germans got out at the bus stop to go to Banos, and I came back to the hostel to do some more avid avoiding of other guests, and go out for dinner on my own and then write my blog.
I haven´t updated about Banos yet, so I´ll do that now too. Basically I got the night bus there from Guayaquil last Wednesday night and met up with Danny there. We hung out in the square and ate some brownies and generally wandered around for quite a while. Banos is a place to go and do things like rafting, bungee jumping, mountain biking etc, or also just do nothing as it´s really relaxing and chilled out and a really nice size and surrounded by lovely mountains you can just look at. On day 2 we hired mountain bikes and got a lift up a big long hill that goes to this treehouse and tree swing, called Casa de Arboles, with a great view of mountains and really peaceful, apart from the American tourists screaming about how awesome the treeswing is - it´s not, ha ha ha. We then mountain biked back down the big long hill, stopping at various viewpoints along the way to look at Banos. Then we carried on and cycled along the Ruta de Cascadas (route of the waterfalls), where you can stop at various points to look at waterfalls on the other side of the valley, and watch tourists do zip lines across the valley, and generally look at nice scenery. We finished in a little place called Pailon de Diablo and had some lunch. Actually I didn´t as I´d had an enormous breakfast in the local market - eggs and rice and avocado and plantain and coffee - but Danny did and I stole some of it whilst diverting him by chatting in my terrible Spanish to him ha ha. We then waited for a pickup truck to take us and the bikes back to Banos - we had to wait until 4 other people with bikes also needed a lift, as they wouldn´t take just the 2 of us.
The next day we hired a quad bike thingy, not sure what you call them but I´ll put a picture up when I can. Like a little buggy thing you would drive in the desert I guess. And we drove up some steep roads and looked at some mountains and then to look at waterfalls again. I had to get out of the buggy at some points as it wouldn´t go up the hills with us both in. I did drive it too but not all the time, and I wasn´t overly keen on driving it on the actual roads there, alongside the traffic. Seems a bit nuts, but lots of other people were doing it, so it must be fine. Danny used to live in Banos so he knows where all the places to go are. We looked at a big reservoir / dam that produces electricity and it reminded me of the dam in Belize that caused all the controversy for being built on not very safe ground and making all the wildlife have to migrate. On our way back into Banos, the engine suddenly started making a really loud strange squealy noise. We got out and looked at it. Then got back in and set off again. Then stopped and looked at it again. Then decided it did not sound good, and we didn´t have an option to drive really slowly if we were going to be on the actual roads. So we decided to call the tour company we´d hired it from. But we had no phone credit so I went to get some. But there was no network for Danny´s phone, so we had to keep driving with me staring at the phone until some signal came along. Then we couldn´t get the phone numbers for the tour place to work for ages, and the signal kept coming and going. We got through and they said to leave it there and they´d come and pick it up. So we pushed it into someone´s driveway (which was quite funny as we had to kind of push it into the oncoming traffic to get it up on to the pavement), and told the people whose house it was that it would be picked up later. They were totally not remotely bothered or interested about this, but I found it all quite hilarious.Then we hopped on the bus and were back in Banos no problem. Amazing.
That night was the panpipe music in the square, which obviously I was over excited about and did some videos of. I tried to find online if there´s anywhere in London where you can learn Andean dancing as I´d love to do that when back. That´ll get me over my post-Ecuador blues, hopefully. I´m going to buy a wooden whistle too and play it all the way home on both flights. After the lovely panpipe music was the other band who played some other traditional music but it was too out of tune for me to handle. I did learn how to say out of tune in Spanish though, which is desafinado. I realised that I´m a bit lazy with Spanish, and need to be more disciplined if I really want to improve. I don´t think I´ll have time for more Spanish lessons whilst here, but am determined to do a class once back. I think I just assume that I´ll improve just by being here, and that isn´t really realistic.
I´m going to actually stop now as my hands are cold. I got an extra duvet as it´s really cold here at night. Wish me luck avoiding any more hostel chat until tomorrow when I leave. I´m off back to Quito to go see the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world - ie the equator) and find a Panama Hat for my friend Melissa, and book train tickets for me and Kim´s trip on the Devil´s Nose train on Saturday. Exciting.
Ciao pepinillos xx
I´ve just eaten my body weight in pasta and tomato salad at a local Italian place that I found recommended online here in Latacunga. Which makes me think of 2 things - the internet is really useful, and why do we have so many different weighing systems? I went to Quilotoa lake today with a German couple (Christoph and Irini), who obviouly both spoke perfect English and it was really nice to meet some new people and have some random chat that wasn´t just about where I was going, or where I´d been, or whether I was married etc etc. We were trying to figure out stones / pounds / ounces / kilos, in terms of weighing things. I literally have no idea, and had just recovered from trying to explain to them what a furlong was ha ha (something to do with horse racing....?). Are there 13 pounds in a stone, or 13 ounces in a pound, or both? Or neither? I´m convinced I´ve asked this same question on a South American blog before. Incidentally the lake was about 350m deep in the middle, and 3km in diameter. We walked for approx 2.5 hours, possibly covering 4km. The altitude was 3900m which makes your heart beat approx 3 times faster (some of these statistics are made up but the gist of them is true). I decided not to go to Cotopaxi tomorrow, as it goes to 4800m, which might make my brain explode, and I´ve had my fill of day trips to Andean countryside now.
We also chatted about school systems in England and Germany - in Germany private schools are where you go if you´re rich but a bit thick, kind of the opposite of England. Irini is a teacher and had spent a year in Sunderland of all places as a German teaching assistant. They are here for 3 weeks which seems like nothing when most people you meet are here for 6 months or more. Talking of which, much to my chagrin, I had to talk to some other guests in my hostel this morning at breakfast. I do love hostels, mainly as I love a bargain, and some hostels, like this one, are actually really nice and very well managed and full of information. However, as you know, I don´t like the hostel chat, so I tend to just ignore it / walk off. Someone invited me to sit with them this morning though so I had to go along with it. He was Irish and has been in South America since January and next he´s going t.........
oh sorry I actually just fell asleep on to the computer
So I was very pleasantly surprised to have the day at the lake with a genuinely interesting and friendly couple, who were MY AGE and had similar feelings re hostel chat. I recommended the hostel in Banos that me and Danny had stayed at and also gave them the number to get a taxi safely in Guayaquil, so that´s some good karma saved up for me in terms of useful information. Which is maybe why I just found the nice Italian restaurant, so maybe I´ve already cashed it in. Perhaps in my case my karma is as fast as my metabolism, ie very. Which interestingly reminds me that I recently dreamt about fighting and swords and being a bit scared, and very soon that day had an argument with someone. I also once dreamt that I went back in time and met Paul Mcartney and Ringo Starr on a park bench and they gave me some of their records. I don´t remember what happened that particular day, but definitely not that.
So our driver, Alex, seemed like the last thing he could be bothered doing today was driving 3 Europeans to a lake that he´s probably been to about a million times. On the way back he drove like he was expecting an important phone call and had left his mobile at home, ie too fast, and kept checking his watch. The road was curvy (but so well paved, thanks to the president), and fairly empty, but the few times we veered to the other side on sharp corners, there unfortunately seemed to be large lorries or buses coming towards us. Nothing bad happened, and it turned out he had in fact left his mobile at home. Anyway all that aside, it was really lovely to get out into the hills and countryside and see some typical Andean villages, and typical Andean people, and llamas, and lots of dogs. Which reminds me (this is a very desultory blog, apologies) - yesterday a dog adopted me in the park and followed me round the streets for ages, and it really really stressed me out. Psychologically I can´t explain quite why, but I think it was something to do with fear of responsibility. I honestly thought he was going to be there waiting for me for the next 2 days everywhere I went, and people would start asking why I´d brought a dog to Ecuador with me, and I´d have to start paying for his dog food, and I don´t even like dogs. I tried to shoo him away and I wasn´t remotely moved by his little dog face looking up at me (ok maybe I was a little bit, but the fear of buying dog food outweighed any compassion). I managed to lose him on a corner somewhere and now writng about it I feel a bit bad and hope he´s ok. I then had a small pizza in a totally empty pizza restaurant - it was 4.30 which might explain the emptiness, that´s not exactly pizza time. The man appeared to find it a little bit inconvenient that I wanted to eat a pizza in his pizza restaurant, so perhaps his hostility was my dog karma coming back to get me, which again proves how fast it works.
Whilst walking round part of the lake today, we chatted about Ecuador, and decided that Ecuador is kind of a more grown up version of Peru and Bolivia. It´s kind of slightly more modern and with better infrastructure, and clearly has more money than Peru and Bolivia, but is still of the same origins. We feel that the government here probably has done things a bit more wisely, and involved foreign investment whilst protecting its own resources - perhaps it is a little bit less extreme than the socialist Bolivia under Morales, which kicked out all the foreign NGOs and really tries to limit if not totally ban foreign investment, to the detriment of the mining industry. It´s funny, but whilst I´ve absolutely loved being here, it hasn´t had the kind of effect on me that Peru or Bolivia ever did. This could be because I´m older now, and it´s hard for anything to be as hugely overwhelmingly impressive as it was years ago, or it could be because there is something genuinely different about Ecuador. I don´t feel that I´m in an Incan country, though it definitely is, and whilst everywhere I´ve been is really lovely, none of it has had a `feeling´ as such. I remember first being in Peru, particularly Cuzco for example, and feeling a really strong sense of foreign-ness and fascination at the culture, and that I was inside something very different. Even in Bolivia last year on my very restricted volunteering progamme, I felt I was in a really different place sometimes in terms of culture and landscapre. I can´t explain it very well, and I can´t work out if it´s something in me, or something in Ecuador. The towns and cities I´ve been to here are really nice - Quito´s really great for a capital city, and Banos was really relaxing and surrounded by mountains, and Cuenca was old and colonial, and Guayaquil was totally different and all industrial and more modern. Perhaps there is a limit to how many Plazas you can look at, or statues of independence day heroes, or colonial cobbled streets, and then they all become the same. Or perhaps it is a desire in me to be in one place now, and get to know things on a different level. I suspect it is the latter, and that I am seeing things with different eyes - and it´s not that the things I´m seeing are not beautiful and interesting because they still are.
The other thing of note, to me anyway (and I am in fact the most avid reader of my blog - sometimes I read it back to myself before going to sleep and chuckle at the bits I think are funny) - is that in the last few days I´ve been truly on my own, which is actually the first time since I got here. Because I met Danny and hung out with him in Quito quite a bit, and then in the jungle, and then hung out with Kim in Cuenca and Guayaquil, and then with Danny again in Banos, it wasn´t until Sunday afternoon that I was on my own for the first time properly. Here´s what I noticed being on my own, and looking only with my own eyes - there are loads of shoe shops here in Ecuador, seriously loads, I don´t know what´s going on with that. Lots of men spit on the street. And suddenly taxi drivers / other random men whistle at you, or say ´hola preciosa´as you walk past. And you have to feel a teeny weeny bit awkward when you go to eat somewhere as you´re always on your own, but it´s always fine and I usually sit there writing notes such as these ones that then get turned into a blog. I love that the smallest thing becomes a reason for being really happy, like tonight - finding a place to eat, walking to it, ordering in Spanish, eating (in Spanish), getting the bill and talking to the owner - it gives me such a sense of achievement to do all that all on my own in a really far away country in a foreign language.
Yesterday I had to ask the police for help. This wasn´t as serious as it sounds. Basically the address of the hostel in my out of date guidebook was wrong, and I couldn´t find the hostel anywhere. I wandered up and down some streets getting a little bit stressed as my bag was heavy. Then I saw about 8 armed policeman on a street corner - which at the time didn´t strike me as anything other than extremely fortuitous. I smiled and said buenas tardes, and asked them if they knew where hostel tiana was. One of them said a few English words, like hello, and then some Spanish words, then got on his walkie talkie, then wandered up the street with me, then some random pedestrian got involved and he seemed to know where the hostel was so I followed his instructions and thanked the policeman. Turns out Banco de Sudamerica had gone bankrupt yesterday, and that´s why there were so many armed policemen outside it on that corner, today I walked past and there was a big notice up about all this, and still some policemen around. I´m not sure of the details, but it worked out well for me finding the hostel - that´s an interesting bit of global / financial karma I´ve got saved up, wonder how that will manifest itself - hopefully in an international lottery win.
So then yesterday there was the Garcia Marquez funereal moment, and the man with the missing teeth in the square, and then the dog that adopted me. I saw the man with the missing teeth again today near the square and we had another chat. Or rather he asked me some stuff, and I said some sentences that may or may not have satisfactorily answered his questions. I then went to the laundry to pick up my washing. I had dropped it off yesterday, it was literally just my underwear, and probably weighed not very much (they charge 1 USD per 1 kilo of washing), so I was expecting it to cost 1 USD maximum. They charged me 3 USD because it still had to go in a big machine to be washed. It came back one sock less, so I reckon that´s not a great return rate on investment. It had taken ages to find the laundry so I wasn´t willing to shop around, or go back to get more stuff to wash just for the sake of it.
Anyway, this blog is meant to about the lake, not my underwear. The lake was stunning, a volcanic crater lake. The volcano is still active, but obviously not hugely active - perhaps deep down inside it there is some lava and perhaps one day it will explode again, but for now it´s a lake. I´ll post some pictures from my iphone. It´s very very blue and greeny-blue, and flat as a pancake lake, but with ripples where the wind blows on it. The wind at the top, which is where we were was quite strong too, and I had my 7 layers of clothing on, and gloves that I´d bought in Cuenca at the park with the religious statues and the canelazo. Then I got too hot. Then too cold again. Then out of breath. Then we got to a small area called Shalala. There were a few really new buildings, one was a restaurant-cafe, and one was an artesan museum thing, but it was closed. We had a really really good coffee and wondered what the deal was with us being the only people around that day, and howcome this was the best coffee all 3 of us had had in Ecuador so far.. Shalala, it turns out, is a typical Andean village nearby, but this was the swanky new bit for the tourists. Which, despite the coffee, I could do without, and would rather have seen a traditional village. We did talk to a traditional Andean lady which was nice.
We walked back the way we´d come, with the lake to our right now, still beautiful, and with some small boats on it. On the way there we´d said how nice it would be to see boats on the lake, and now there they were. When we met up with Alex (our driver) again, he said actually they´re only little canoes and not very safe due to the wind on the lake. Oh well, they looked nice from the top of the crater where we were. We had some lunch - soup and omelettes with plantain and rice - then set off back to Latacunga, via the curvy roads and near misses. The Germans got out at the bus stop to go to Banos, and I came back to the hostel to do some more avid avoiding of other guests, and go out for dinner on my own and then write my blog.
I haven´t updated about Banos yet, so I´ll do that now too. Basically I got the night bus there from Guayaquil last Wednesday night and met up with Danny there. We hung out in the square and ate some brownies and generally wandered around for quite a while. Banos is a place to go and do things like rafting, bungee jumping, mountain biking etc, or also just do nothing as it´s really relaxing and chilled out and a really nice size and surrounded by lovely mountains you can just look at. On day 2 we hired mountain bikes and got a lift up a big long hill that goes to this treehouse and tree swing, called Casa de Arboles, with a great view of mountains and really peaceful, apart from the American tourists screaming about how awesome the treeswing is - it´s not, ha ha ha. We then mountain biked back down the big long hill, stopping at various viewpoints along the way to look at Banos. Then we carried on and cycled along the Ruta de Cascadas (route of the waterfalls), where you can stop at various points to look at waterfalls on the other side of the valley, and watch tourists do zip lines across the valley, and generally look at nice scenery. We finished in a little place called Pailon de Diablo and had some lunch. Actually I didn´t as I´d had an enormous breakfast in the local market - eggs and rice and avocado and plantain and coffee - but Danny did and I stole some of it whilst diverting him by chatting in my terrible Spanish to him ha ha. We then waited for a pickup truck to take us and the bikes back to Banos - we had to wait until 4 other people with bikes also needed a lift, as they wouldn´t take just the 2 of us.
The next day we hired a quad bike thingy, not sure what you call them but I´ll put a picture up when I can. Like a little buggy thing you would drive in the desert I guess. And we drove up some steep roads and looked at some mountains and then to look at waterfalls again. I had to get out of the buggy at some points as it wouldn´t go up the hills with us both in. I did drive it too but not all the time, and I wasn´t overly keen on driving it on the actual roads there, alongside the traffic. Seems a bit nuts, but lots of other people were doing it, so it must be fine. Danny used to live in Banos so he knows where all the places to go are. We looked at a big reservoir / dam that produces electricity and it reminded me of the dam in Belize that caused all the controversy for being built on not very safe ground and making all the wildlife have to migrate. On our way back into Banos, the engine suddenly started making a really loud strange squealy noise. We got out and looked at it. Then got back in and set off again. Then stopped and looked at it again. Then decided it did not sound good, and we didn´t have an option to drive really slowly if we were going to be on the actual roads. So we decided to call the tour company we´d hired it from. But we had no phone credit so I went to get some. But there was no network for Danny´s phone, so we had to keep driving with me staring at the phone until some signal came along. Then we couldn´t get the phone numbers for the tour place to work for ages, and the signal kept coming and going. We got through and they said to leave it there and they´d come and pick it up. So we pushed it into someone´s driveway (which was quite funny as we had to kind of push it into the oncoming traffic to get it up on to the pavement), and told the people whose house it was that it would be picked up later. They were totally not remotely bothered or interested about this, but I found it all quite hilarious.Then we hopped on the bus and were back in Banos no problem. Amazing.
That night was the panpipe music in the square, which obviously I was over excited about and did some videos of. I tried to find online if there´s anywhere in London where you can learn Andean dancing as I´d love to do that when back. That´ll get me over my post-Ecuador blues, hopefully. I´m going to buy a wooden whistle too and play it all the way home on both flights. After the lovely panpipe music was the other band who played some other traditional music but it was too out of tune for me to handle. I did learn how to say out of tune in Spanish though, which is desafinado. I realised that I´m a bit lazy with Spanish, and need to be more disciplined if I really want to improve. I don´t think I´ll have time for more Spanish lessons whilst here, but am determined to do a class once back. I think I just assume that I´ll improve just by being here, and that isn´t really realistic.
I´m going to actually stop now as my hands are cold. I got an extra duvet as it´s really cold here at night. Wish me luck avoiding any more hostel chat until tomorrow when I leave. I´m off back to Quito to go see the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world - ie the equator) and find a Panama Hat for my friend Melissa, and book train tickets for me and Kim´s trip on the Devil´s Nose train on Saturday. Exciting.
Ciao pepinillos xx
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