30 Nov, Baños

Saturday morning we woke up and wanted to go for a hike. We started out by getting a ride to this bridge that cost us $0.50. The old man looked at us like, "that's it?" and we continued to walk. Natura wasn't feeling well, so she got a ride back into town and rested the rest of the day.


Michael and I decided to take this other giant laundry basket across the canyon. We hiked up this drainage system that was full of little waterfalls and sometimes big boulders. We hiked for a couple hours and came to this biggest waterfall, which wasn't very big, but the biggest.

We thought it would be a good idea to take a "shower" so we played around in the waterfall for a while. It was so much fun. The pressure of the water would just about take your shorts off it you weren't holding on to them. It was also really neat because you could go behind the waterfall and sit on this rock.

Once we had had enough fun in the water fall, we headed back down. We played around in this little swimming hole. The water was deep enough to jump for rocks situated above, so we did. I think the highest was probably only 10ft, but none the less exciting.

When we headed back to the giant laundry basket to take us back to the other side, this old man said that is was closed for the day. While Micheal was trying to sort things out with him, I took a look at the drive train.

Sure enough, with "Pontiac" stamped in the valve covers, I knew it was a car engine. It had a manual transmission and three petals. The output shaft was attached to a flywheel that would drive the cable and it had a spot where a manual break pad would slow it down.

When Michael was unsuccessful in his negotiations, we started walking on this trail on the side of this cliff along the river. Once we got back to the road, the long way around, we got a ride back into town and gave our ride $1.00.

Natura was still sleeping when we got back to the hostal. After she woke up, when went to the market and got some ingredients to make rice and bean burritos. Just as we returned, it started raining. The three of us sat around and ate. We drank cane liquor with tonic and limes and played card games like Rummy 500 and an Ecuadorean game called Cuarenta (40) with an American ex patriot, Jason, who was in the beginning his new life as a Ecuadorean.