Bathrooms, bathrooms everywhere... yet I can never find one

After one last day in Quito spent doing laundry and frantically trying to buy airline tickets for our flights within Peru, we were ready to head south to spend some quality time in the quaint town of Bathrooms. I believe the town was actually named for its thermal baths, but I find Bathrooms a funnier translation. Baños is in the central sierra, but it is a good 1000 meters lower than other sierra towns so there´s pretty nice, warm weather here. The town sits at the base of the active Volcano Tungurahua (aka The Black Giant), which is a beautiful cone shaped volcano covered in snow. It has been erupting a bit in the past few years, but at the moment its nothing to be worried about.

To get to Baños, we took a 3.5 hour bus ride south from Quito in the afternoon through the Avenue of the Volcanoes (I think there are 7 or 8 of them on either side of the main road). We shared the bus with some crying babies and a dashing young man carrying a tiny white puppy in a plastic sack (to prevent any unwanted accidents, I´m guessing). I took 100 pictures out the window and Rachel tried to sleep. Unfortunately for her, everyone who came on and off the bus bumped into her as they made their way down the aisle and for some reason all of them had mud on them and managed to cover Rachel´s arms in dirt. I ate some peanuts and took more pictures. Then an old woman walking down the aisle paused near Rachel and somehow covered Rachel´s head with her shawl on accident.

We are staying at a pretty cute hotel here called Plantas y Blanco. It literally means Plants and White, such a creative name. The rooms are great, we have free internet (though it´s practically useless for me since the computer here won´t recognize my portable hard drive with all my pictures on it), and a beautiful roof top terrace restaurant with awesome food.

We woke up early today and took the obligatory bike ride along the ¨Ruta de las Cascadas¨, or the route of the waterfalls. We rented some bikes for $5 and took off at about 9am through town. The road we took is on the way to Puyo, in the jungle, so we essentially biked a third of the way to the jungle. We biked a good 20 or so kilometers. For a while we shared the road with trucks and cars, biked through a pitch black tunnel with no lights (I am starting to think the Ecuadorians are a bit crazy), and became covered in sweat. I managed to take some video while I was biking because I couldn´t pass on capturing the beautiful mountain scenery around us. We stopped every so often to look at the waterfalls along the side of the road. Our main destination, however, was Pailon del Diablo, the most famous waterfall on the route. I just Googled it for more information, and you might be excited to know it was featured in the movie Proof of Life with Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe at the end. It is essentially 3 waterfalls in one, but for a long time nobody could figure out where its origin was and only the last part of the waterfall could be seen shooting out of a cliff. It´s gorgeous. We had to hike down the mountain for about 15 minutes to get to the view point. The all uphill climb afterwards wasn´t so nice. Rachel and I were panting and sweating like pigs. But we kept passing old ladies being escorted by their grandsons and giant French women in ballet flats on the trail, and this was a bit baffling to us.

Before el Diablo, we went on a short 50 cent hike to see the two other feeder water falls, San Pedro and San Miguel. (I could have the names wrong.) Our new, super friendly drug addict friend Antonio collected our 50 cent entry fee at the start of the trail (he was giving everyone a discount, so he said). We thought that we´d pay and then be off on our little hike. Not quite. After he discovered we were ¨California angels¨he could not stop talking. He somehow got on the subject of the 3rd and 11th dimensions and paintings that would be hung along the trail that would be like a giant puzzle to the story of the waterfalls and anyone who ¨understood¨would understand the real, deep meaning of it all. He made us promise, as well, if we ever met Robert DeNiro or Quentin Tarantino that we would tell them that he was waiting for them in Baños. We promised.

We took a camioneta back into town rather than biking back again. We tried to get some money out of the bank and the ATM wouldn´t work. Rachel only had $12 at this point and I had none. At this point we thought we would have to survive on $12 for the next few days until we could figure out what to do or how to get our cards to work. Everything turned out to be okay in the end and Rachel´s other card ended up working at another bank, but it all gave us a little scare and reminded us that we can´t be spending too much money anyway. We´ve been splurging at bit and buying $4 meals for dinner. Oh, so expensive! Shame on us. I just have to make sure I have enough money at the end of my trip to cover another 3 months down here in South America.

As we were typing in our blogs just now, some Argentinian and Colombian guys just introduced themselves and asked if we wanted to go to the thermal baths with them. We said we wanted to just stay on the internet and go to bed. They must think Americans are so boring. Perhaps we are. At least tonight.

One more random story before we are off to bed... there was a parade earlier today while we were using the internet cafe. I am not sure of its purpose but I saw a bunch of young boys jumping and twirling around in the street in purple and red shiny pantsuits to the tune of a marching band. I missed video taping it. Later in the afternoon we were walking along the same street and I saw a mass of people coming towards us in the street and heard some music. I took my camera out with lightening speed and yelled out excitedly, ¨I am going to video tape this!!!!¨. Turns out it was a funeral march. And the whole entire town was mourning the loss of this man. Oops.

Cuenca tomorrow... 6 hour bus ride... yay.