Boobies, Turtles and a lot of buses

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Luckily we did manage to catch the bus to Baños that evening, and arrived at midnight. We were expecting to be dropped off in a bus station and instead it was the side of the street with groups of men lingering everywhere. We didn´t really want to be left there, but had no choice as the bus quickly sped off.. leaving us pretty scared. We marched to the hostel as quickly as possible avoiding eye contact, ignoring comments, and with our heads deep inside our guidebooks trying to see the map in the dark.

Baños is Gorgeous! Lots of waterfalls everywhere, and famous for its thermal baths as well as its extreme sports. Unfortunately when we were there it rained non stop... it was pretty grim. Instead of cycling around all of the waterfalls we climbed into a ´chiva´bus... basically a truck with benches and no real sides that plays loud music and has flashing lights.. a party bus so to speak. We were the only ´gringos,´ with the rest of the party ecuadorians, so we chatted with them as we squinted through the rain to see the falls. We did canopying (being clipped onto a zip wire by your back and feet and ´flying´through the canyon) which was really fun.. though i think i feel safer on the bus.. even at night.

We went to the thermal baths that night to try and warm up after a day in the rain, and they were lovely! The waterfalls, mountains and moon in the background were so pretty, although we did feel slightly uneasy by the amount of interest we got from the surrounding crowds.. as Steph said "I´ve never had a bath with 50 Ecuadorian men staring at me!" An experience!!

The next day we got up early and headed to Mount Quilatoa.. this was not in our plans but a guy we had met told us "it was so beautiful i cried".. so we added it to our itinerary. We took a bus ride through the mountains, getting higher and higher, with beautiful scenery (llamas, sheep farmers etc)..good for trying to distract you from the cliff edges the bus was veering towards. We arrived mid afternoon and a lady jumped on our bus offering a place to stay. We managed to haggle a good deal, $8 for dinner, a double bed each and breakfast, and then we headed off to the mountain to see what the fuss was all about...

Well I didn´t actually cry, but the view was spectacular. The bus ride had taken us almost to the top of the mountain, and we just had to climb a little further to the sommet and we had the most incredible view of a huge turquoise shimmering lake completely surrounded by volcanic mountains. The trek down to the lake was fun and enjoyable, but when we trekked back up that night it was a different story.. it was getting dark, cold, the altitude made it harder to climb, and we had been warned about wild dogs!
That night was absolutely FREEZING! Double beds were not needed as we all huddled into one to try to stay warm. The log burner in our room dyed out after 20 minutes, we then spent the next 40 mins trying to cut kindling with out penknives (very impressed with ourselves for this ingenious idea!).. we got a flame for a few minutes and then it plunged into smoke again. :-( Not the best night´s sleep! (A huge understatement!)
The next day was a "bus day". We spent the entire day traveling to the coast on a variety of different quality buses. Some were good with lots of space and films playing, the worst part was at about 8pm (dark already) when the bus stopped, the driver told us to get off and get into a different one "because of a crash". We didn't really know what was going on, but had no choice but to obey,and climb out with all of our bags and stand on the side of a busy road in the dark! After a few minutes trying to think of a plan if we were left stranded there another bus did arrive, and we ended up in a lovely hostel in Puerto Lopez, with Hammocks, and tree house style rooms.

Thursday... we hauled ourselves out of our mosquito nets early to go on a tour to La Isla De Plata "the poor man´s Galapagos."An incredible day! On the boat over we went whale watching! Saw lots of tails and fins being waved at us. On the island there were tons of exotic birds.. blue footed boobies being the most impressive. But the highlight of the trip was after the island, when we went swimming with turtles!!! We put on snorkels and dived off the boat and were suddenly surrounded by about 5 huge turtles! It was amazing! They weren´t scared of us at all and appeared to want to play! We were able to hold on to them and take be taken for a ride, really something special.


Next stop is Montañita ...

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