Rio Bamba

that´s where we are today, buiying train tickets

Baños

So we were in Baños the last few days. We were at the internet a couple times but since I spent all my time deleting spam and replying to job recruiters, I didn´t keep my blog up to date. I still haven´t filled in Mindo´s details yet either. What I´m going to try to do is tell the story of Baños in reverse.

This morning Kelsey got up before me. She even went and showered before I got up. And was then pressuring me to get ready so we could go eat breakfast, which was complimentary, continental, from the restaurant attached to our hostel, some frenchy named place that was run by a bunch of white chicks.

Which is irrelevant. The point I´m making, and which you may not realize is significant, is that today, when we had nothing to do except ride a bus to Rio Bamba and get a train ticket and a place to stay tonight, Kelsey was not only awake, but up and out of bed, washed & dressed and ready to eat by 9 am. This is unknown to me.

So we had breakfast, bread (pan) and strawberry jam and hot (caliente) chocolate and Hugo de Piña (pineapple juice.) Which was very good but at the Hotel Ross where we stayed before, which was quite nice -- I had a King size bed and Kelsey had a double, overlooking the sqare with the cathedral-- served eggs with breakfast.

Yesterday we checked out of Hotel Ross because they were full. We found La Petite Whatever, where we stayed last night, and Kelsey thought it was cute (the walls were yellow) so we put our bags there and went around town for a while and then went rapelling (canyoning in spanish.) All this was accomplished before noon. It was about two blocks, and we packed (Kelsey is quick enough, but it only takes me a minute.) We had gotten up for breakfast sometime after 9, but returned to quarters until 11 when we checked out.

After lunch at Kelsey´s favorite spot in Baños, Cafe Hood (where, as the sign says, the food is good) we went, as I said, rapelling. Down waterfalls. Our trial run was on a 20+ foot drop that was very slippery. Okay we had a trial run on the road where we practiced tying a knot and pretending to jump. I have some good shots of Kelsey practicing. At five feet, approximately, above the pool, we kick out and let go of the rope and splash into the water backs first.

Very fun. The next fall was a bit smaller, a lot slipperier (resbaloso), and not nearly as fun. Oh yeah, and the guide, after assuring us that the first was was plenty deep to jump into (about 5 feet), forgot to mention we were jumping into about 6 inches of water on the next one. I bashed my elbow on a rock and it bled nicely for a bit.

The third falls was at least 150 feet drop. With no rapelling after the first section. Just a straight drop through the water which was just a strong spray this time of year. We only got to go down that twice, but it lived up to the pictures, what sold us on the trip initially, when we signed up for rafting, which we´d done the day before.

Yesterday was the Sixteenth of December, which was the most important day of all in Baños. We´d known since Wednesday that there was a big festival, since the first part of it took place that night. The selection and crowning of the La Reina de Baños de Agua Santa (Miss Baños.) There´s even a street named after the day.

Wednesday we were up all night hearing the music and noise in general, of the festivities. Thursday turned out to be a dud, even the carnival was closed -- but we did make it there last night -- but Friday morning was the main event. Mostly a parade, that happened to culminate right by our new Hotel. Luckily it moved away eventually, but the parade was a good three hours long, at least.

We´d been hearing punk kids bang on drums (very poorly) since the day of our arrival -- when we were trying to sleep after 7 hours of riding buses from Mindos, and now all the schools in the region were out to show who was loudest. The town was in a festive mood all day, but most of the afternoon, we were out jumping off of waterfalls and sliding down ropes dangling over wet overhanging cliffs.

We got back and things had mellowed a bit. In fact, by 7 oclock when we went to see the rides at the carnival, things looked pretty mellow. Street vendors were starting to close up, and the crowds from morning were mostly gone. We eventually found the party way back up the street, right across from our first hostel. But we had a fairly quiet night.

So that was yesterday, in a bit of a jumble, with a few allusions to the previous three days, but no mention of our bike ride through the tunnel of death, our several crossings of your typical Andes ravine by cable car (tarabita) to beautiful waterfalls and good orange juice, the long uncomfortable bus ride (in a comfortable bus) with lots of hawkers and beggars -- ïncluding a fake mute who earned Kelsey the aforementioned titles of ¨mark¨ and ¨soft touch¨, or anthing about the bad restaurants and bad service, cute old people in traditional outfits and small brimmed fedoras (some of which are really just rude beggars), or plenty of other things I´m forgetting. Ask me to tell a story sometime, because it´d be better if I had more time. I just spent an hour writing this nonsense.

Mindo

We went tubing at night, we went hiking like crazy to some wimpy waterfalls, we ate much good food. I will try to add to this later, but I´m getting behind.

Quito

We were waved through customs while everyone else had to wait to be screened. I managed to smuggle an apple into a foreign country. Perhaps the smoothest airport experience ever, both sides. Not more than a minute wait, except for baggage, and practically none at all in Miami, checking in (though the line we were first getting in meant we wouln´t have made our 2 hour later flight), security (Kelsey loved the new sniffer technology at Miami airport.) Okay, we did have to wait to board because the cleaning crew didn´t finish their job.

We hopped a taxi from the airport to the hostal Kelsey booked in Quito. She insisted on paying the driver $10, though it would only have been a $5 ride in the states, and only a $2 ride in Ecuador, but only that much because it was from the airport, and at night. She´s what we call a ¨soft touch¨ in the business, or what they call a ¨mark¨in the other business. More on that later.

Cars here have seatbelt straps, but no buckles, which is pretty cool, but useless.

We checked into the place after the driver wandered around, unable to find the street, which I finally gave directions to. It was a pretty swank place, pretty much a whole house, though there were two Dutch girls, and a Swiss guy staying there, all studying Spanish.

We went to the tienda (small store) with our hostess, a nice little lady, in her car. It was about a block away. We got soup and crackers, and that was our dinner, with apple & strawberry soda.

Next day we walked around the whole city. Saw two cathedrals, one is called the Basilica, where they bury the dead presidents, but since few presidents retire in good standing, few were buried there.

It looked like it was built in the 20th century, using cinder blocks, concrete, and rebar, but never quite finished, but it is in a shambles, practically falling apart. Think the Kingdome. We climbed all over, across a causeway (cswy for those of you from Medina) over the vaulted ceiling of the chapel, and up the towers where there was a real danger of the ledge breaking off and plummeting 100 feet or more to our untimely demise or no more timely serious injury.

We climbed to the top of the tower and as Kelsey said in her email, someone had graffitied in marker not to ring the bells, but I didn´t feel that was official enough a warning, so I rang them. So did Kelsey with minimal prompting.

Yes we have pictures. And climbing ladders and such in the cathedral was more frightening than crossing a ravine on a cable car, or crossing the stream at the bottom of the same ravine in a rotten footbridge.

The other cathedral we sat in the chapel for a bit, walking in with sqeaky sandals that reminded me of the ducks that had kept us up the night before. Kelsey told the hostess I wanted to eat the ducks, and the little old lady said, I quote, ¨I kill you!¨

The basilica´s chapel was closed, but I got locked in a spooky dark alcove when Kelsey abandoned me and the elevator doors nearly pinched my arm off. I took pictures to light it up with the digital camera, and it looked like there were ghosts (semi-transparent streaks) whenever I pointed at the chapel, but not the staircase leading down to the dungeon.

We also went up a hill in a taxi to see a statue of some chick with wings. It was big. She was standing on the world.

I don´t know if the call them taquerias here, but all the places we ate in Quito were good.

Next morning we caught the 7:20 bus to Mindo, a small town that had more hostals than residents.

Miami

Hello,

I just set up a new blog, a sequel to my fiji blog (fijiaaron.blogspot.com) in which I will try to detail my adventures in Ecuador with my novia, Kelsey Fox. She´s mucho cool even if she has a funny voice and doesn´t know much Spanish.

We spent a night and most of a day in Miami after a layover in Atlanta. We had a rental already paid for, but they were out of Economy size at Alamo, so they said take a Compact, nada, Midsize, same. Finally we settled on a minivan, only to find we could take anything, sportscar or SUV. I almost backed it up but Kelsey was tired from walking around the garage with heavy packs for half an hour.

So we checked into our hotel which is right on the strip on Miami Beach only a block from the beach. The hotel was a bit ghetto, but clean enough. We spent the evening feeding the meter until midnight when there was free parking. We had an excellent steak dinner at the restaurant next to the hotel with a Russian hostess and Polish waitress who I asked if she was Russian.

Tip: if you ever hear an accent that you can´t place and ask them if it´s Russian, it´s sure to be Polish.

So we went to the beach at night and the next morning and then drove around downtown Miami and hung out in Coconut Grove. The ¨Barnacle¨, a historic site, wasn´t closed. City Hall was in a Marina.

I think I like Miami. Driving was easy and the weather was great, even though it was storming the night we came in. Only no surf. You should have seen how stoked the boys were for sloppy 2 foot storm swell the next morning.

We found a walgreens to get supplies and made it to the airport. Massive lines everywhere except where we had to go. No ticket line, no TSA line, etc.

Only I lost my ticket wandering around. Luckily, someone turned it into the TSA (Homeland Security) counter and just as I was panicking (while Kelsey looked for an icecream for me) I asked at the security checkpoint and they had it.

So we made it to Ecuador, flying over Cuba and Panama.