Baños

For our first excursion out of the city a bunch of us went to Baños, a small tourist town about 4 hours by bus from Quito. Its name comes from the natural hot springs caused by the active volcano that borders the town, not because it has particularly special bathrooms.





Travel buses here are surprisingly comfortable, and end up costing less than a dollar per hour. The price makes Greyhound seem like straight up robbery, but it's far from luxury. As soon as the bus gets out of city limits and starts to pass through small towns, it picks up anyone who needs a ride and before you know it the aisle is stuffed and it resembles the public transportation in Quito.
We arrived Friday night, unpacked, and went out to some bars and dance clubs. Having been to Perú and experienced the “Pisco Sour” culture, I decided to try Ecuador's version of the drink. Contrary to the name, it was very sweet; and also blended, not shaken. This would be enough to make any Peruvian furious, and honestly, I felt a little offended myself. The next morning we went on a mountain bike ride to some waterfalls. A couple of hours in, a girl (the one I worked with the first week) crashed on the side of the road, and split her chin open. As soon as I saw it I knew she had to get stitches. It must have been the visible fat and muscle that gave it away. The only problem was we were 10 or 15 minutes away from town by car, and the only way to get back would be to hitch a ride. Luckily some Spaniards that were biking to the waterfalls had a car following a few minutes behind, so I went with her to the hospital while the rest of the group went on. I wanted to make sure they used clean instruments and to be a translator in case she was too shook up to understand. Apparently they get enough tourists getting injured that their equipment is decent for a rural town. She had 2 or 3 deep stitches and 5 superficial stitches. I'm not sure how they handled the bikes we had to leave behind, but all I know is they ended up back where they belong.

That night, after taking a dip in the hotsprings, we all hopped on a Chiva bus. Chiva buses are really popular in Ecuador. They're basically open party buses. Everyone gets their drink of choice beforehand, and the bus drives around for a few hours while music plays and people dance. It took us up a mountain to get a view at the volcano, which is often glowing and spewing a little, but it was too cloudy that night. We got dropped off at a Latino dance club and walked back to the hostel after a couple more hours there.

On the Chiva bus

Making jugo de caña, sugar cane juice. I bought some and after a few days it was fermented. My host dad and I tried some and it was pretty good, although any more than a sip would probably have given me the runs judging by the appearance of it.

A view of the town of Baños

I watched the World Cup final with my family after coming back on Sunday. It was a different feeling to watch soccer in a country that actually enjoys it. Kinda nice.