Baños

Tungarahua
I´ve been in a tiny town named Baños since Thursday, at the base of a giant Volcano called Tungarahua. It is Ecuador´s 10th highest at just over 5,000 meters. In Quichua the name means ¨Little Hell.¨ For some reason I didn´t realize that when I heard Ecuador had ¨active volcanoes,¨or that Quito was surrounded by three itself, that they were actually erupting from time to time. I guess I thought it happened every hundred years or something. Well, there are at least 18 volcanoes in this country. Tungarahua seriously erupted most recently in July 2006. I rode a horse up the side of the volcano on Friday morning to about 3,000 feet. Tungarahua started belching smoke again late Friday night, and the country is starting to watch it more closely...

After last weekend I found myself a bit under the weather, and spent some time just sleeping and not eating much in Quito. It felt like when you´ve been hanging upside-down for a while and then stand up, the blood rushing to your head and just that constant, awful pressure. Wednesday morning I had my Spanish examination at Catholic University (obviously I failed and I´ll be starting in level 1), and I had hoped to leave town immediately thereafter to use the long weekend before classes began. But I barely made it home to crash - could be anything really - water, food, swimming in a waterfall, etc. So Wednesday evening I´m pretty sure my fever broke (not sure I actually had one though), and by Thursday morning I decided to suck it up, stop acting like a panzy, and take off for Baños.

I did meet a couple nice kids at the University. Luis (25) is Ecuadorian and his girlfriend Chistina (22) is from Slovakia. She´ll be taking Spanish as well but will probably start at a higher level. Anyhow, these kids met at Six Flags - Chicago, on some kind of international work abroad program. How bizarre, eh? Luis was instrumental in helping me through the university registration and payment process. Christina loved the fact that I not only knew where Slovakia was but I also knew that it had separated from the Czech Republic about 15 years ago. I do wish I had made it to Bratislava on my previous trip through Eastern Europe. I hear it is a georgeous, one-horse town.

I got ripped off for the first time (that I´m aware of) as I left Quito on Thursday. Purchasing a bus ticket at the busy terminal is a little intimidating. Each company has a couple of windows with people yelling at you to buy a ticket as fast as possible. It´s like they are possessed or something, very entertaining if you don´t need a ticket. So this woman assured me I was on the next bus to Baños and I paid the $3.50 for the 4 hr trip, only to be handed a receipt with a scheduled departure time of 2 hours later. They´re very good at communicationg until you want your money back. And so I bought an additional ticket at the next window for a bus departing 20 min later.

Busride Observations

I thought it might be interesting to record some Quito to Baños observations, although unfortunately much of what I saw was poverty:

• About half the passengers on my bus, mostly wealthy or tourists, actually bought a ticket and got on at the station. The rest hopped on just outside as we were leaving in the middle of traffic, or on the side of the road along the way;
  
• As soon as you leave Quito you start to see some real poverty - completely gutted, open to the elements 5 story buildings with stores open and operating on the first floor;
  
• Men washing themselves from a spout on the side of a building/factory;
  
• Communities with unpaved roads, clotheslines everywhere hanging from abandoned homes and buildings;
  
• What appears to be a minimum securty prison on the outskirts of Quito, and later a paratrooper training facility;
  
• The bus television newscast highlights 4 main stories: 1) 15 min of runway models and Playboy Latin America girls shaking their booties at the beach during Carnival; 2) 1 min announcing the 112 deaths during Carnival; 3) 4-5 min discussing politics and protest in Guayacil, the southern port city and economic powerhouse of the country; and 4) 6-7 min of footage of a cat playing the piano;
  
• A Mercedes Benz dealership outside my window in a suburb has a completely empty lot - it appears to be currently functioning as a bus terminal;
  
• We´re back to incredible micro-habitats and biodiversity - I count over 10 shades of greens and browns, not to mention locals selling all kinds of goodies. They literally hop on the bus and sell everything from q-tips to batteries to yoghurt to baked goods;
  
• Many, many cows on the sharply dropping hillsides;
  
• Farming on every inch available - different altitudes yield different products, and terrace farming appears to be a specialty;
  
• The kid across the aisle bears a gigantic picture of Jesus Christ on his t-shirt;
  
• A rival bus company passes us called Marco Polo, with their New England Patriots insignia;
  
• Petrol costs about $1.50 per liter outside the city - is it nearly 4 liters to the gallon?
  
• And finally, the 65+ yr old man next to me, who had unbuttoned and unzipped his pants for maximum comfort as soon as he sat down, is starting to drool on my left shoulder. No personal space! Nunca!

One thing I noticed right away in Baños was the presence of Israelis. Now, they are not as prevalent here as in, say, Vang Vieng, Laos, where every menu has a duplicate copy in hebrew. Let´s just say they could be easily spotted with their obnoxious noisemaking at all hours (I´m pretty sure I heard this one dude puking through the wall at 4am), and it wasn´t hard to spot local bookshops carrying their literature as well.

Riding Straight Up
I can´t thank my horse Loco enough for doing all the work for our 4-hour jaunt up and down la ruta de la volcan, navigating the dried lava and ash on one side and the tree-tomoato and maize farms on the other. Despite his persistant and outrageous gas problem, I was extremely lucky I didn´t get the other horse.

The devastation is incredible. You can see remnants of homes and farm outposts, but everything is gone. It´s like a biblical ¨Final Days¨ or something out of a horror film. Mas arido! Everything is just black, and smoke still rises from pockets of ash. The great thing is that nobody died last year - the volcano is closely monitored by local and international groups, and everyone was evacuated.

We were only 3 for the day: our young guide Wilson who is an exceptional soccer player, myself, and an older German fellow named Haagen who pretended to know zero Spanish but then started asking where all the chicas were as soon as we hopped in the jeep to leave. He´s the one who got on the wrong horse. What happened was a 15 yr old kid (cousin of Wilson) tied Haagen´s saddle on incorrectly. About 15 min into riding straight up the volcano, the entire thing came undone and Haagen went tumbling down. It was funny except for the massive gash in his hand. He tied a piece of his t-shirt around it to stop the bleeding and we pushed forward, our guide Wilson privately cursing his young cousin. It wasn´t an easy trek either. Wilson showed me how to grip the horse´s mane for added stability as we rode at sharp angles upwards, and at other times it was so dangerous we had to dismount and let the horses climb alone ahead, following on foot behind them. Loco was a bit sick too I guess. He farted the whole way up and down the volcano for 4 hours. At first it was comical, after a while it was just downright impressive. He also smelled my persistant fear of riding and refused to cooperate half the time. The other two would be 100 meters ahead, and despite my kicking and whipping with a tree branch (like a jockey!) he would not move. Wilson would then come and save me, and then it would promptly happen again. Other times Loco would just take off running and Wilson would have to come find me in some person´s tree tomato farm desperately pleading with the horse to turn around. But I think Loco and I came to an understanding by the end. He stopped farting as I whispered sweet nothings into his mane, telling him that I was fed up and I was going to have him killed. At the end of our ride we went to Wilson´s cousin´s house so he could scold the boy (who screwed up the saddle) while Wilson disinfected the German´s wound and I just sat quietly observing soccer trophies on shelves and their modest mountain home.

I think I need to buy some tighty whiteys asap. Either that or I need a serious lesson in horseback riding and other activities unforgiving to the crotch. I thought it would be the easy activity to choose, but I still hurt. And yes it was fun all those times when Loco took off running; I guess I just don´t have the right technique for protecting my boys.

61K to Puyo!?

For the next morning I was contemplating the 61K, 8 hr bike ride from Baños to Puyo, la ruta de la cascadas, a supposedly spectacular descent into the amazon that takes you through small towns and multiple waterfalls. But I didn´t want to ruin all chances of having children in one weekend, and my ankle was really bothering me. I think it is the same problem that leaves me unable to run more than 2.65 miles at the gym back home. Only now it is worse; I wake up unable to put pressure on the right ankle until I walk on it enough through the pain to loosen it up. The problem is it hurts again after I sit down for lunch or anything else. I´ll return to Baños for the bike ride later.

And so I opted instead to spend the day at the famous thermal baths, La Piscina de la Virgen, as well as stop in for a full body 1hr massage at ¨Stay in Touch.¨ I know, back to being a panzy, but it was raining anyway! The bath was hilarious. I was the only white-skinned person in a terribly crowded sea of humanity. And people love the coffee-colored, murky, sulphuric water with all its medicinal promise, taking laps and splashing everyone around them. Sitting in the equivalent of a large hot tub (shout out to Katie), I admired a small waterfall at my back and rolling mountains and blue sky just beyond the town church in front. That church is crazy too. The walls of the cathedral are covered in paintings depicting miraculous stories of men being saved by Santa Agua from the fires of the volcano, the rising river in the valley, or even more modern events such as traffic accidents. Each painting will say something like, ¨On Feb 23, 1773, while the volcano was erupting, Senor Gustavo was thrown from his horse while trying to cross Puente San Francisco , but was miraculously saved by Santa Agua before tumbling to his death on the rocks below.¨ People are very religious, and don´t take these stories lightly either. I stopped for a full glass of jugo de cane de sucre on the way back (Chino remember we always used to see people grinding those huge bamboo stalks to make juice?). It was way too sweet and made me feel sick, but gave a good sugar high and ample energy to get home.

Interesting Conversations as of Late

It never ceases to amaze me how different your experiences are on the road when meeting other travelers, rather than staying in a place like Quito for cultural immersion. No matter where you go, you´ll likely learn more about the other travelers than the country you are all visiting.

The first people I met at the hostal were Julie and Jon, two Saskatchewan natives from the 2 largest cities there I had never heard of. We sat on the roof-top deck for $1 large pilsneur bottled beers and discussed our homelands. Julie is a nutritionist and had a really frustrating/funny story about a 500 lb, ¨million dollar¨patient who refuses to leave the hospital even as his wife continues to bring him Wendy´s fast food every day. The hospital can´t stop it and he likes to alert the local news media to his frequent maltreatment. Apparently he loves the place like a hotel and is milking the system for everything he can get. Of course the conversation immediately turned into a comparison of private v. national healthcare systems. They say they have some problems in Canada but people generally love their system. Saskatchewan has been socialist in many ways for decades, for all intents and purposes, Jon explained. Jon dropped out of school early to open an extreme sports equipment shop. He buys most of his equipment from California and resells it. Interesting I guess, he´s been open for 3 years.

But the most fascinating topic by far was the economic boom currently taking place in nearby Calgary, Alberta. Proud Saskachewan citizens are losing precious inhabitants to their western neighbour due to the dramatic changes brought about by oil-sands technology and drilling. I was trying to imagine a similar economic exodus phenomenon in America, perhaps the tech boom in silicon valley? But this Calgary boom is different: it is not about human and intellectual capital and the internet; it is about pumping chemicals into the earth to liquify oil deposits and then extract them. The environmental effects are obviously not so positive - river levels are already said to be dropping, eco-systems changing, and serious pollution problems appear imminent. Still, the big companies involved (I´ll admit I´ve had Suncor on my stock watchlist for months now) are making ridiculous profits. 18 yr olds without even a college education are being thrown onto rigs and paid $60,000 to work, or university students recruited across the country for upwards of $100,000. Jon´s friend took his bulldozer to the area and was paid $250 an hour to help dig. The situation has also created a housing bubble, as there are not enough houses in the area yet and companies put workers up at hotels or fly them in every morning. A $150,000 house now easily commands a $400,000 sale price in a matter of 2-3 years. I couldn´t help but fantasize with my Saskatchewan friends (who seemed bitter) about the eventual collapse of this boom in Calgary and how it might devastate the area once the oil is gone. I also wondered about all those $2-3 million homes back where I live...

You can always tell when you are surrounded by Americans. How embarrassing! At breakfast one morning I started cracking up, watching these two girls struggle with the menu. Don´t get me wrong, I can´t read it yet either, but I don´t do the typical spoiled American thing where you try to be picky with what you´re ordering and roll your eyes at eachother in front of the waitress about the quality of the water, etc. That´s just bad form. But obviously I still talked to them. Low and behold, they were G-town medical students on vacation from their 1 month stint at a Quito hospital. Apparently the facilities in Quito are fine, but they do lack some of the more important technology we´ve come to rely on at home like having there own CT scan. I forgot to ask them about my ankle.

My final night in Baños was the most exciting. I met some Dutch kids over beers and we headed out to a steakhouse and the bars for the night. They promised me the best lomo in the country for $6.50, but of course the restaurant ran out of it. It´s ok, the chicken genovesa stuffed with pesto wasn´t bad at all. These two guys have been traveling around Ecuador for 3 months after 8 weeks with a family in Quito studying spanish, etc. They were very smart I think not to try to do all of S America like these other idiots. We got drunk talking about American and Dutch politics. They have a crazy system, with first rooms and second rooms and strange voting systems and man I got lost. The impressive thing was that these kids, Tom and Stoni, are only 19. Many Dutch travel before heading to University. Tom works at an upscale organic butcher and Stoni at a restaurant. Stoni´s father restores antique furniture, one of maybe 6 woodcarving experts in Holland, and his son is interested in film and photography. Tom will be a biologist. These kids each speak like 4 languages. I gotta tell you, at 19 I would have done little else besides get drunk on a trip like theirs. Instead I felt ike I was sitting with extremely educated and mature men --> after dinner we went bar hopping and got hammered, discussing music and movies for hours (Tom is a heavy metal drummer who loves Wolfmother! and Stoni a guitarist). Some drunk English girls currenty living in Puyo attacked us at our table at the ¨rock¨bar, and we ended the late night with some quality street-side hamburguesas.

So that´s about it. I grabbed some local milcocha (taffy) to bring back for the Quito ladies and boarded the bus as Tungarahua continued to build up pressure behind me. I can post some impressions of spanish class next time, as today was day 2.

Hasta luego.