to the beach

 

Banos, named for the healing hot springs that bubble from its grounds

 

I landed in Banos during a holiday weekend. the streets were packed with Ecuadorians. it was hard going finding a place to hang my head for a few days but i stumbled on a great spot. $8.50 dorm room in its own little house, no bunk beds and a sweet outdoor garden was just a glass door away. Hugo walked in as i was tossing my stuff on my bed and for the next week he and i and a whole host of others walked the wild life of Ecuador. Hugo and i hit the streets of this remote mountain town swollen with party goers. We decided to try the local variety of guinea pig, which is a delicacy and for 10 bucks, very high for a meal, i had a half. It wasn´t full of meat and the head with the teeth in tact seemed to be smiling at me throughout my meal but it was an experience that anyone that visits this country or the surrounding ones has to try. it didn't taste a lot like chicken, nor pork, it tasted like chork. some combination of both.

Dig in, one of many traditional dishes i have sampled

fried bananas, rice, beans and a hunk of steak, all for 2.50, not the rodent meal

Hannah, Snear and I at Vibes in Quito

I met up with two English girls from my time in Quito, one, Hannah, above, and the four of us spent the next five days together. We went whitewater rafting in a wonderful landscape with rivers bulging from the heavy rains the night before and the rains that continued trough our trip. In total we spent about one and a half hours on the river through class 3 plus and 4 rapids. we all dumped out of our boat on a few occasions and one American who was doing more filming then the rest of us hoped, forgot to paddle and ended up in the wash dislocating his knee. It was a hairy few minutes while we all tried to get back in the boat swallowing more river water than i had desired, when one of the girls used my head as a floatation device, i forgave her after she bought a few rounds at the bar. after only trusting only our 20 minute training course and plastic helmets that had clearly dueled with rocks before, we survived. Albeit one of use would be walking with a limp for the next few weeks. That night we ran into our guide from the river as we bar hopped around retelling stories from the day at sea, river, whatever. We closed the bars down and were thankful that we didn't have to get up till one in the afternoon for horseback riding.

Pinto and I

i had only been once back home and it seemed like it could be a nice day, visiting waterfalls and taking our steads into the endless mountains that surrounded this tiny town. My horse "Pinto" was the worst horse of all four, the girls seemed to have been given the best behaved while Hugo looked like a giant at 6´3´´ on his little horse, it was clearly a pony. Pinto had a habit of biting any of the other horse if they got close and at one point reared up and bucked one that came to close to hit butt, i didn't blame you on that one Pinto. Ecuador is mountains. the mighty Andes. Volcano's here are like cows in Vermont, plentiful and never far away, but they smell better. We road into the mountains and watched as bubbling springs rose from the ground as pure as mountain water can be. We drank and told jokes about various stomach bugs we were going to get once we noticed our guide wasn´t thirsty.

 Hannah getting dysentery

All in all Banos was fantastic but it was time to leave and a few days ago i started my way to the beach, Stopping for the night in Riobamba, nothing much to tell there. I am now in Montinita, sitting by the sea, my room is great side from being in the middle of a town in a tourist boom and starting at 8 everyday building noises of every sort can be heard through my walls and though my ear plugs. Other then that life is grand, I'm on my own again and soon i will be heading north, maybe tomorrow, if I'm not to lazy. I heard there are some humpback wales migrating off the coast and it might be nice to say hello.

be well!

jake