Baños Day 1

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Forenote: pictures will be added later due to slow-as-glass internet in much of Ecuador!

Baños Day 1:
We wake up and rest and drink lots of water after having two dinners the night before, each with Chilean wine. Today we’re tired and reflective. We sit on the roof of the hostel for a few hours, writing and catching up with people and news and blogs online. We catch a bite to eat at Cafe Hood, a very touristy and colorful restaurant.

We eat lunch in the market. It’s good. After being tired from all of the activities and energy exhausted by traveling in supremely non-touristy areas, we simply hang out. In fact, we hang out so much so that we cannot bear it any longer; we strike out for the hills. Passing by a school, we turn into the trail that leads us to the cross on the hill. It’s a bellavista. We take pictures. Ok, we took a few.

Thinking our hiking is over since the sun is playing a pre-bedtime game of peekaboo with the clouds and horizon, we start down. We remain sweaty but on the way back down we hike up another trail for 500 meters for another view as the sun sets the table for the moon. It looks like the sun’s layover in Baños for the day is over and it finally caught its flight westward. Snap-satisfied, we hike down.

We get sandwiches for dinner because they are much cheaper than pizza. The sandwiches are great sandwiches from a great bakery (panadería). As far as we can judge, the man who runs it bent the rules by making us sandwiches at this time of night. For a topitoffer (dessert), we get una torta queso y una torta naranja (one slice of cheesecake and one slice of orange cake). They’re both delicious.

We retreat for dreamtime.