Baños: part 3

Yes, I actually did touristy stuff when I was here. We got there Friday evening about 5.30pm, and walked around the town a little. It doesn´t take long to see all the interesting places. Anyway, on Saturday morning, we went rafting! It was really awesome! I thought it would be a lot rougher than it actually was, but it was good anyway (they were class 3 rapids, I have no idea what that means, but I think they´re beginner rapids). This is the river where we went rafting. It´s not a very good photo, but I obviously couldn´t take any others. This is where we ended up.

On the way there though, we drove past a dam, and beyond the dam lay the saddest and most miserable looking river I had ever seen! I didn´t manage to take a photo of the actual river, but here´s a photo of another river (possibly a different part of the same river?). It serves the purpose to illustrate its misery. I imagined that the river would´ve once been great and mighty (as evidenced by the location of the river banks and markings on the sides of the mountain), but has now been reduced to a trickle (relatively). It looked so depressed! I think the rapids may also have been stronger had the river not been dammed!

There are some thermo-springs in Baños, they´re hot springs naturally heated by the volcano. We went swimming on Saturday night (actually it´s not really swimming, more sitting around in a hot pool). It was really good, they had small cold water pools around as well, so you can dip in and out. It really opens up your pores (especially when switching between hot and cold). I guess it´s like a sauna, but natural.

We went to the pools twice, once on Saturday night and again on Sunday afternoon (just before we had to get the bus back to Quito). There was such a big difference in atmosphere and experience between the two! On Saturday night, the pools were full of foreigners, as well as old local men (in their 30s and 40s) trying to pick up young foreign women. And they weren´t at all subtle about it (it was really ewww). I suppose if you´re trying to pick up, you´re not usually subtle about it, but that´s not the point. There were also lots of couples around (generally local), but that´s no problem. It was just the older guys chatting up younger women that was gross! It´s like the ultimate pick-up spot in town! I don´t think they would´ve had that much luck though. Most of the foreign women were in groups, and had no interest in the guys, although they chatted rather amicably (read: politely).

On Sunday when we went, it was totally different. We were the only foreigners there (it was 3.30pm). The whole place was full of families, everyone brought their kids, and there were lots of little children splashing around with floaties. It was ok, not as relaxing as Saturday with all the children around, and the water wasn´t as hot either (I have no idea why). But there were no seedy old men, which was good.

We also went clubbing on Friday night, to see what it was like. It was....interesting. There were about 2 or 3 clubs which had a reasonable amount of people in them, the rest were embarrasingly empty. We walked around the whole town (the touristy part) and in the end, found only 2 that were ok. Of the 2, one was full of foreigners (with a few locals, not as many seedy old men as the baths, which was good), and the other was full of locals (it played only spanish songs). It was alright, I wasn´t particularly interested in the club scene, in fact I was quite bored most of the night. Plus it was really hetero, and like any other straight clubbing experience, I felt a bit like a fish out of water. Or maybe I´m just getting old...

On Sunday, we went hiking up the mountain (I was going to go rock climbing in some place 2 hours away, but I didn´t end up doing it. LONG story which will probably have to wait till I get back. If you can´t wait that long, ask Stacy!). We were hiking to a lookout place called Bellavista, and it was a lot steeper than we thought it would be! Oh my god I´m so unfit! It was a good walk though, and it was nice at the top. The photo I posted in part 1 was taken here. Here I am with the other 2 German volunteers (Christophe and Nele).
Something which urked me, we asked 2 people to take photos for us, and seriously, these people don´t know how to take photos (they were also tourists. You would think tourists would know what kind of photos we would want)! This photo could´ve been way better (views of the mountains and everything). Oh well, it´s alright, considering the first guy we asked just took a full length photo of us, without the view!

Oh, I also bought street food for the first time! And it didn´t make me sick! Yay! It´s roasted corn (the top one. It was crunchy) with some sort of other bean/legume. I asked the vendor what it was, but I´ve forgotten what she said. It was in Spanish. At first I thought it was soy, but I don´t think so now. Ecuador doesn´t have many soy crops (soy milk was USD $3.80 in the supermarket!!). It was pretty good (plus it came with lime, and tomato and onion salad sprinkled on top. You can just see it in the photo). It´s just the right amount too, because my jaw got tired towards the end from having to chew so much. It was only $0.50 (all prices are in USD because Ecuador uses US currency. Very handy)! Oh, they also have lots of sugar cane juice here (jugo de caña in spanish), it´s so awesome! There are heaps of people selling it on the street, both the juice and the stick which you can chew. I bought a glass of juice, it was sooo good. I haven´t had sugar cane juice in so long! How nostalgic (Malaysia has lots of sugar cane juice vendors).

p.s. I´m in the internet cafe and thy have the radio on. The radio is playing the Shakira song (the sexy one about the hips) and it´s in spanish. There are lots of english songs playing here which have been translated into spanish. It´s cool!