Sixth day- laughter.

5:51 PM flashesofgold 0 Comments

So I realize I've skipped four days on blogging my adventures in Ecuador. I've been in Banos without my laptop for the last four days. Although it's a bit much to be blogging on four days worth of adventures in one post, I can say it's definitely been worth the procrastination.
The first day in Banos was a great long trip from Quito. Four hours of traveling via bus to be exact. It was pretty uneventful besides conversation...oh and Annie almost getting her camera stolen by two vendors who were sitting in front of us and were clearly looking at us through the corners of their eyes for a very long time. And...the craze did not end there. When we finally got to Banos, we had trouble deciding on a hostal to stay at, and ended up staying at this hostal, whose owners did not look very friendly or trustworthy. Sure enough, it turned out that they had lied about giving us a $5 deal on both staying the night and food. FOOD WAS NOT INCLUDED. Which of course was not mentioned, which then led to pissing Alexa off to no end and all of us getting wrapped up in the drama. It was a crazy time. After settling in for a bit, we went out to bars and it was a jolly good time. I believe this was the night that we met our dear friend Javier who I can only describe as a hilarious dancer with hips like Shakira. Oh and I met this kid who we ended up running into THREE times in the next four days resulting in people having to rescue me many a times from him [he just really wanted to dance!]. When we got back to the room, a couple of us gathered in our room and ended up playing 10 fingers, in which many inappropriate topics were brought up, including the comparison of the harriness of Henry and Sam's legs.
The next day we went on a tour to the waterfalls which was so much fun. Again, it was one of those moments where I couldn't decipher reality from fantasy. Some people went bungee jumping which got my blood rushing just watching them do it. At the last waterfall that we visited, we went down this beautiful path through what seemed to be a rain forest and we got to swim under a waterfall. I still can't believe it. It felt so much like I was so immersed in nature. It was pretty great. After that, I'm thinking we took a nap, and then went to go eat. Which really meant walking around for a bit trying to figure out where to eat. Until I spotted "Cafe Hood" [where the food is good]. The food was absolutely delicious and we all had a grand old time there. Then we went out again, and everyone was so silly that night, all together and dance-y and such. I ran into my creeper again and people had to save me but other than that, great times.
The next day was when all of us were supposed to go back, but we got news that we don't start tutoring til next Monday so 5 of us [Bri, Sam, Henry, Alaina and I] ended up staying an extra day in Banos. All of us went to the hot springs in the morning [where many people either pointed or called me Chinita and took a picture of us]. The rest of our group left after this at their scheduled time and all of us gringos made a scene in the bus terminal where we made a big deal in hugging each other and say our goodbyes. After that, the 5 of us decided that we didn't like our hostal [or really the people that own it] so we went to look for a new hostal to stay at. We found a good one with a nice owner and decided to spend an extra $1 to stay there for the last night. After that we ate at Cafe Ali Cumba where a cheerful Danish woman served us delicious sandwiches that we devoured in less than ten minutes. We then went horseback riding, where all of our horses had ridiculous personalities. Mine was an alpha male horse who was a little wild and of course named Jackie Chan. Jackie hated Mariachi, which was Bri's horse that I was guessing was Jackie's rival. Sam's horse Luchito was always in the back of the pack...and was facing the wall away from the other horses when we got there. Henry's horse Whiskey was super calm and Alaina's horse Michael Jackson really liked being really close to other horses' butts. It was pretty funny. Except for when Jackie almost made my heart stop by speeding up close to a ledge in the mountain. But we all got beautiful views and it was pretty great. After we got back, it was shower/nappy time and I woke from my nap to sounds of kids screaming. We went to this really delicious pizza place, which employed [who else?] my creeper. He was reading but really he was watching me from the corner of his eye so we all left soon after eating. We went back to our room before going to our volcano tour, where we didn't see much but fog. It was still a fun night and we were very confused by what our tour guide, Sergio, was telling us. In fact, at one point they offered us a mysterious drink and made a joke about gringos and falling into lakes.... we didn't really get it. At that point Sam said, "What are we drinking and why are we ending up in a lake tomorrow?!" It was pretty funny. We went out that night AGAIN, which was way too much for me, but was still fun. We ran into Javier [we didn't know his name until last night] and danced with him for a while. We got pretty tired though, so we ended up leaving after a little bit. When we came back, we didn't play 10 fingers, but rather passed out in a very short amount of time.
When we got back home to Quito, most of us were too tired to do anything so we stayed in while the others went downtown. Banos trip again? Mayhaps. Banos was awesome, we had bread everyday, we met awesome people, and we want badly to go back, to the land of loud and colorful chivas.