We got in around midday and grabbed some lunch before wandering to find a hostel. Having not planned ahead, as per usual, we were lucky to get a hostel in the center of town on a Friday. (We were only half lucky though because the hostel was booked full for the next night, as with most of the rest in town. Luckily we found one hostel that had a patch of grass and they let us pitch our tent for the next two days.) Baños is not only a destination for foreign tourists, on the weekend it swells with Ecuadorian vacationers as well. First things first we hopped across the street and booked our canyoning tour for the next day. Then we set about exploring Baños. The town is tiny, but gorgeous and chock-full of neat things to see. Every other shop in town is a candy shop and the primary thing they sell is meloncocha, which is basically salt water taffy. One dollar got us a big bag full of all different flavors. Keegan is starting to worry that he is losing weight so he inhales all food that gets too close to him. Therefore I only got a few melonchas, but from what I had they were delicious. We also hiked over to the edge of town, where a beautiful waterfall crashes down from a hundred feet above.
Yum, meloncocha
Just to the left are the hot springs Baños is famous for. We attempted to go, but they were really full and dirty looking so we passed on that one. The waterfall is gorgeous though!
October is the Month of the Faith, so these faithful citizens celebrated by following a marching band around town and carrying big statues of idols
The next day was the big canyoning tour, and we were super excited. Our group was great. A friendly Brit named Sam and a Chinese family that had recently relocated to Quito because the father worked in the Chinese embassy. It definitely made what we were doing seem slightly less intense because the 40 year old parents and the 9 year old girl always went first. It was still kind of scary though! We got to rappel four waterfalls: 8, 15, 25, and 30 meters tall. The 25 meter one we actually only rappeled half way and the second half you ride a make-shift zip line down.
We are on the left, Keegan´s suit looked like the pink Power Ranger and he acted accordingly
No style points here. Wet suits are just not going to be flattering.
I had to keep one of this little girl to show everyone how freaking adorable she was. And brave too!
This is the zipline part. The scary part was the jump and the hope that the makeshift zipline would hold. (Spoiler alert: it held just fine and we all survived.)
Go go Power Ranger!
Our guides were super friendly and they loved that I spoke Chilean Spanish so they told us the first drinks were on them down at the bars. Baños is known as a party town and it was Saturday night so we happily took the guides up on their offer. Big mistake. The free drink was actually a shot called the Flaming Bob Marley and it was supposedly some sort of cane sugar alcohol, but it just tasted like sugar. Our hangovers the next morning agreed.
We ended up spending all of Sunday inside watching movies with our British friend Sam and his travel companion Cal. Sadly, it wasn´t due to the hangover but to the fact that my foot had swollen up like a potato. When we were doing the safety talk before canyoning the day before I could feel bugs biting my ankles and I tried to brush them away but apparently unsuccessfully (since I was wearing shoes and a wet suit the only part of me that was exposed was my ankles.) Well whatever these bugs were, I am allergic so Sunday was a rest day.
I joked that it looked like a Botero drawing, the Colombian artist that draws everything incredibly fat. It would be another 3 days or so until I saw my ankle bones and foot veins again!
The next day, I had to get moving. Despite my foot still being pretty swollen we decided to hike up to the Casa de Arbol, the Tree House. An 8k hike up to a big swing. The hike took us awhile because of my foot and because we got lost several times. It was made better though because right in town we picked up a travel companion, a dog we affectionately named Perro. (Perro is just Dog in Spanish, not creative but it worked.) We were pretty sure Perro was not a normal street dog because he was 1) way bigger than most street dogs, 2) way dumber and seemingly less survival-minded than most street dogs and 3) way too clean (before the hike that is.)
Perro in all his glory. He started out the hike really peppy, but he was dragging by the time we got to the top.
I was also dragging a bit. My foot barely fit in my hiking books!
Beautiful Baños. Supposedly the tallest mountain in Ecuador is somewhere around here, but it was so cloudy we never saw it!
It rained for awhile, but we didn´t mind and neither did Perro
This is partly how Perro got so dirty. Both on the way up and on the way down, he was so hot he just plopped himself in this big mud puddle. Not a care in the world.
The tree house was awesome even though it is supposed to be a look out and we couldnt see anything because it was so cloudy. The people at the top loved Perro and the fact that he´d followed us for over 2 hours and the fact that we had named him Perro.
The tree house, nothing fancy and definitely no beautiful views, but it was good to get my blood pumping again.
Keegan and Perro
Piper and Perro. He liked me more than Keegan because I fed him the rest of my corn cob
The main attraction of the Tree House! The swing into the abyss!
When we got back into Baños we started worrying about how we were going to get Perro back to his owners. If it weren´t for his size he would surely have been attacked by the other street dogs who kept growling at him and, even more terrifying, he clearly did not understand the danger of wandering into the street (taxis stop for no one here.) So we decided to walk back to the area where we found him. About 1 block short of where we found him, a little girl gasps and runs out and throws her arms aroud Perro. She hurriedly rushed him inside a house and several more little girls screamed happily. Their mom told us the girls had been crying and looking for their dog all day and she laughed when we told her about his great adventure up to the Tree House. We were happy to know that Perro had a good home, and were a little embarassed because we returned him so thoroughly filthy.
Afterwards we realized we kind of missed Perro. He was a great companion even if he wasn´t ours.
No comments:
Post a Comment