29 Nov, Baños

Last weekend Michael, Natura and I went to Baños for the weekend. Baños is situated on the side of the volcano, Tungarhua about 3 and half hours south of Quito. It is a little city with LOTS to do. It is very green town, with a town center teaming with life. It is also full of outdoorsy things to do such as rafting, biking, hiking, and much more.

Natura had been staying for some time, so she is very familiar with the area. When we arrived and Hostal Chimenea, I just left my stuff in their room and occupied a bed in the dorm for $6.00 a night. Once we got situated, we decided that we would take a little excursion to this waterfall, La Manta de la Novia about 20 minutes outside of town.

As soon as we got off the bus, we started walking on this trail of switchbacks down to the river. When we arrived at the "chocolate" looking river, Rio Pastaza, we had to cross this Indiana Jones style suspension bridge. As soon as we crossed the bridge, we arrived at this tiny development with a sign the read something like "Bienvenidos a la Manta de la Novia, Adultos, $0.50; Niños $0.25; Extranjeros, $0.75" (Welcome to the Manta de la Novia, Adults, $0.50; Children $0.25; Foreigners $0.75). No one was there, so we just decided to go to the waterfall and take some pictures.

This waterfall was pretty big and it was very beautiful. When I got closer to have my picture taken, it was rather breath taking as well. There was so much green around. There was moss and plants growing all around.

After we had our photo shoot, we followed the drainage down to the Rio Pastaza, and played around in the river for a minute. Because the area is a volcanic, the sand on the river banks is black. There is a lot of pumice stone just sitting around also.

On our way back through the little development, a man was waiting for us. We tried to get the adult rate, but there's no denying the we were three gringos looking at the waterfall. We ended up paying the Foreigners rate. A quarter doesn't sound like much, but when you come to a cheaper country where bartering and negotiating prices is a norm, it makes you cheap, really cheap.

We walked up a trail on the side of the waterfall we were on so we could take the open air gondola across the river. The open air gondola was more like a giant people moving laundry basket that took tourist back and forth across the canyon.

When we got to the other side, I noticed a man sitting behind an old car engine with a transmission "driving" our laundry basket. There are just somethings you don't expect to see, that is one of them.

We hitched back to town. We were sitting in the back of this pickup and went through this tunnel that seemed like it went on forever. The interesting thing about this tunnel, there were no lights and there was surely no ventilation. The only light that we had was the car driving 10ft. behind us, probably also trying to hitch a ride. When we arrived back to the center of town, we gave our indigenous family $1.00 for the ride.

Later that evening, we ate dinner at the hostal that Natura prepared. We had a big pot of what was supposed to be rice with veggie curry, but because there wasn't much rice, we just threw it in the curry and it turned out to be more like veggie curry soup, it was still really good.

After dinner, we decided that we would check out the beauty pageant that would lead to the Queen of Baños. This seemed more like a joke than anything, but it was still fun. There was seven young ladies who were candidates. During intermission, we got to listen to this and that probably wasn't good enough to play at a wedding reception. It was more comically entertaining than it was musically.

We didn't end up staying for the whole thing, but the "Queen" wasn't going to be announced until the next night anyway. We retired for the evening shortly after that.