weekend in Banos

In This weekend was great. Friday morning I got up and went to the place to register my VISA. It was a pain, as should be expected, because this kind of stuff is much like doing anything at the DMV at home.
I came home and waited around for a bit. Packed. Then met up with Cathy, Whitney, and Jackie. We got on the bus and headed to Baños.
Baños is incredible. It’s set in this valley surrounded by tons of waterfalls and pretty mountains. Our hostel was gorgeous. It was called Plantas y Blanco. We had our own little room, 4 beds and a bathroom.
Friday night we went out and got some dinner then came back and pretty much went right to bed. We went to an Italian place really close to the hostel. I had some kind of lasagna and it was great.
Saturday morning we got up at 7am and got dressed. We went to the terrace/restaurant on the top of the hostel where we ordered breakfast. All the girls but me got double pancakes with fruit and yogurt. They were delicious. I, on the other hand, got French toast. It was the best French toast I have ever had. It had cinnamon and eggs and bananas on top, and pure sugar cane syrup of course! So good.
Then we left to go on a hike to “La Cruz”, we thought this would take us to the cross up on the hill. Instead it took us first to La Virgin statue on the top of a smaller hill. I about died. Besides the fact that I haven’t done any serious physical climbing or hiking in a long time, the altitude killed me. I had to keep stopping, I’m sure it was killing Cathy, too, who worked at Rocky Mountain National Park as a hiking guide and was ready to go and not ever stop, basically.
We ended up at this small spa town village thingy and met a woman from ATLANTA. She was really nice, there on vacation with her husband. She told us to go to the waterfalls. At this point it was beginning to rain. The GA woman’s tour guide told us that we should just follow the road back to town and not go see the cross because it was rainy and cloudy and we wouldn’t really be able to see anything. So we followed the road. It took us all the way around the mountain. We were on the other side of the mountain from where the town was. What should have taken about 30 minutes took us 4.5 hours. We kept following the road until we finally arrived back into town.
Problem was, I hurt my hip. I felt like I needed a walker. Seriously, every time I took a step with my right leg I winced in pain. So we finally got back to the hostel, got lunch, and laid down.
Lunch was incredible. We went to this vegetarian restaurant. Thing is: the owner/cook paints his own pictures and sells them from the restaurant, too. The pictures were gorgeous. I really wanted to buy one for myself and one for someone else, too, but they were way expensive. Sorry, guys. The food was great, too. I got the “Concierta Vegeteriana”. It came with steamed beans with garlic, steamed mixed veggies (squash, peppers, carrots, something else I cant remember), tons of steamed broccoli with this great sauce on them, I cant remember the name of this vegetable but it’s purple on the outside (it was okay, but I didn’t eat most of it), and this incredibly good potato patty thing. I also had fresh lemonade. The whole thing was so good.
Whitney and Cathy decided they were gonna rent bikes and go see the waterfalls. So they did. While they did this, I took a shower, checked my email, took a quick nap, read the guidebook to see what we might want to do today, and played some checkers with Jackie. They came back around 7:30 and we went to get dinner. Went to a place called “Abuela’s”. Yes, Abuela’s. That means “Grandmother’s”. Let’s all say it together: “A-bway-lahs”. Good job, everyone! J I had Hawaiian pizza. Super good, again.
This morning we got up again at 7am for breakfast at the hostel. This morning we had eggs and an assortment of fresh homemade breads. They also came with two types of jams: strawberry YUM and pineapple YUM. It made me really miss JoJos Strawberry Jam, though, it wasn’t as good as that. But this morning with my breakfast I had strawberry juice, fresh, incredible. So good. You cant even imagine.
We then got ready and went to the actual baños. These are natural steam baths that are all around the town. There are tons of different ones you can go to but we picked these certain ones that were kind of out of town in hopes they would be less crowded. They weren’t, and it was cold so the hot one was super crowded. We got in anyways. Because of all the minerals that are in the water, the water is brown. But it is supposed to be that way. It didn’t really feel dirty but it definitely looked that way.
It was really nice, though. It was like a natural hot tub. With a bunch of Ecuadorian friends in there with you. It was really crowded but it was still nice. It made me want to go to sleep.
We left and came back to the town and ate lunch. Nothing to brag about. We then got on the bus to come back to Quito. My hip still hurts. I’m hoping after a night in a bed I am somewhat used to and some legitimate sleep (not that I get to sleep in or anything) that I might feel better.
I did make an interesting observation when were leaving Baños, though. You know how when you go to the Homeplace, for instance, and when driving down the mountain, you can see the other mountainside across from you with the valley of houses in between? Well, here, the valley has houses and the ground looks like a quilt, just like at home, divided into land plots, however, on the mountainside, where at home it looks like trees and basically just mountain, the land plots and homes continue. It was just odd to see a town-like land layout on the side of the mountain, as opposed the actual trees and nature that we see when we look at that kind of view at home. I hope you all followed that train of thought…..
Now, I have tons of homework to do before I can crash and go to sleep. I have a quiz in all three classes tomorrow. And on Tuesday I have a test in anthropology. So I guess I should get working on that stuff. But I wanted to write this all down for you and for me haha before I forgot all the good details.