Last night in Baños

Unfortunately for you guys, the last few times I´ve tried to upload photos, there have been extenuating technical circumstances which prohibit it. Sooo frustrating. Like right now, when it tells me that I don't have the security level necessary to access my own photos. I will never understand computers, especially not south american ones. I only recently found out where the apostrophe was.

Anyway......... had a great last week in Quito. It was the beginning of their annual citywide independence celebration, and was quite the fiesta. I was only there for the first few days (actually I think it's culminating today) but it was some crazy times. Concerts everywhere, streets shut down, basically one big 6 day party.

A bunch of us from the hostel (if anyone is heading to Quito, i highly recommend Hostel Revolution in San Blas, it's amazing)got pretty close and had some good times out on the town, getting invited to house parties out in the suburbs of quito, which provided an entertaining early morning trying to find a cab way out there willing to drive us back to the old town. But they had some hilarious nineties music that all of us were singing along to, and the one ecuadorian guy even started freestyling, which took me back to old times, hahaha. There was one really annoying guy there though that claimed he was part of Phark in Columbia, though he didn't really seem like the type. But made some good friends, (including my roommate for the week, who is from San Diego and has been an extra multiple times on Veronica Mars, and when I found that out I think my excited girlish squeals freaked him out, but seriously, how cool?)I actually stayed an extra day there because there were two Swedish brothers, Joel and Gustav, who were leaving for Baños on Sunday so I stayed around to travel with them. (not entirely because they're basically gourmet chefs who cook me amazing food and i only have to do the dishes, but that was a large part of it, haha)

So Sunday afternoon we got a bus here to Baños, about a 4 hour drive, whilst entertained by back to back C grade Elizabeth Shue movies in spanish. Thrilling, let me tell you.

But anyway, arrived here around 8:30 and managed to find a nice hostel with a really cool terrace and glassed in kitchen slash restaurant thing on the roof. Pretty much just crashed there after some less than impressive ecuadorian style pizza, since I hadn't slept more than an hour the night before (see account of houseparty above). But then the Monday we checked out the town a little bit, had a delicious 1 dollar almuerzo in the market after heading to the thermal baths outside of town. Definitely not what I was picturing, as it turned out to be basically public pools with dirty looking volcanically warmed water. But around behind it you could follow this stream around the base of the mountain, which was pretty cool. And then we were told it was a really good idea to take one of these chivas, an open bus sort of thing, arranged by various tour companies in town at night up to see the volcano. But after a rather long and uncomfortable bus ride, we only went halfway up the mountain to where we had a great view of the town, but couldn't even see the volcano at all because a different mountain was in the way. Felt cheated out of my three dollars, but they did serve me some delicious juice slash tequila mixture which sort of made up for it.

And then Tuesday we rented some horses to ride for the day, and a guide took us up in the mountains a bit, to a nice waterfall, etc. which was pretty fun, a)because i hadn't ridden a horse in a while and it was nice to get back on one, emaciated though it was, and b)because the boys had never ridden before and their faces, squirming and complaining was likewise entertaining. And then after dinner Joel and I managed to find this obscure pathway up to the radio tower which actually overlooks the town AND the volcano, and managed to see some explosions and a bit of flowing lava, though very far away and kept fading quickly, but still pretty cool.

And today we rented some mountain bikes and went for a ride (more strenuous than i had expected, due to the wind tunnel effect of the mountains and ridiculous equatorial sun)down the ruta de las cascadas (waterfalls) which was spectacular, went on a cable car across this huge gorge river thingie and then hitched a ride back with a rather unfriendly ecuadorian man in a pickup. And then some dinner, and then the swedish boys were off to the coast. I'm staying here another night, possibly doing some canyoning tomorrow morning and then catching a bus to Riobamba, about an hour away because I want to do this cool train ride on Friday morning, the Devil's Nose, where they let you ride on the roof of the cars. And then probably a night bus to the coast, at Mantañita, where it's supposedly a really chill beach town with some good music and a bit of surfing etc. Probably stay there a couple days, with a day trip to Puerto Lopez and the Isla de la Plata, otherwise known as the poor man's galapagos, before heading back down to a few places in southern ecuador on my way to Mancóra for December 14ish. Which I am just realizing is next thursday, ie a week from tomorrow, so I guess I´d better get my ass in gear, ahaha.

Anyway, off to the telephone cabinas, and will be tomorrow again, because December 6, for those of you who don't know, is Mr. Frank Gustin's 52nd birthday, so for all of you close enough, please give him a big birthday hug from me!!!! Thanks, and chau!