Baños - Bathing, Massage and Crazylady

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First forray into SA bus travel

So, we met a girl called Mellisa at the Secret Garden and she was going to Baños that morning too; So we thought it would be a good idea to go together seeing how paranoid people get when talking about the Quito Terminal Terrestre (or Baghdad as some people would have you believe).
Anyway, we managed to buy our tickets with our lives and possesions still intact (a miracle if you listen to some paranoid nancies).
Well, a rather uneventful journey later and we arrived in Baños and found our Hostal, Plantos y Blanco (Plants and White) which seemed nice enough.
Later we checked out the hot spring baths under the waterfall but decided against it due to the large number of local kids frolicking - early in the morning was far superior, we were told.
As a surprising coincidence we met a friend from the Galápagos cruise on the stairway in Plantos y Blanco (Mariette the Swiss). Anyway, in Spanish we arranged to go for a meal that night with her and her friend. A bit of a daunting prospect for us due to the fact that Mariette spoke very little English and we rapidly realised that our Spanish was about to be tested. Well, the night went really well and all had a good time - we were really pleased with ourselves and realised that our Spanish was passable at least for a short period of dinner conversation.

Early morning bathing in the shadow of the waterfall

So, up early for the baths - we arrived at 7am and it was extremely peaceful with only the oldies having their morning bath and chat. We proceded to enjoy the medium bath (lovely luke warm), then alternate with the extremely hot one, via the shower of diverted waterfall water (freezing). We even had a dip in the pool of waterfall water and I did a few lengths - I was feeling macho and envigorated, after all.

Beautiful surroundings of a waterfall, mountains all around (including resident active volcano) really completed the whole experience which I´d love to repeat - the climate is beautiful in Baños to cap it all.

After breakfast on the terrace later on we went for hour-long massages, and had some food at the Crazylady café so named after the clearly losing-it proprietor.

So, a few pics of the volcano (which promply spewed a massive plume of ash and smoke skywards for our entertainment) and we took the bus to Riobamba that afternoon.

In my diary I have recorded the half-finished houses that are common (the people leave an option for a second storey by having the steel and concrete structure sticking out of the first floor). Very unsightly but I´m sure it´s economic and you do get about 1% of the houses actually having a second floor so i´m sure it´s worth keeping the options open.

Lots of dogs on roofs.

Ecuador wouldn´t exist were it not for the breezeblock.

Riobamba - cobbled streets, and Simpsons AND Futurama on TV in the hotel. Very cool and still funny in Spanish even though we couldn´t quite understand it.

That was Baños and the trip to Riobamba....

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