Baños

Day 167 – We hate goodbyes!

It was a bit of a trek back to Baltra Island (the airport) from Puerto Ayora (on Santa Cruz Island) so we had to be up reasonably early for the 1.5hour or so trip to get our 10.40am flight.  We thought we had plenty of time (at least another 45 minutes) when we got the airport, so Anna and I popped in to the Lonely George souvenir shop for some t-shirts and Matt waited in the lounge.  About 15 minutes later they were making a last call for us over the loud speakers!!! (Again!)  Not exactly sure what we had done wrong, but hurrying to the gate anyway, we were once again one of the last to get on the plane, the doors were closed and we were off about 20 minutes ahead of schedule!  Its seems that not all of South America works on South American time after all?!

When we touched down back in Guayaquil it was time to say goodbye to Anna.  We had three great weeks together, but now she was off to present at her “Occupational Therapists of the World” conference (unofficial title) in Santiago and her holiday was over for the minute.  It was so fantastic having a familiar face around and some renewed enthusiasm for touristy things!  And we needed it!  We covered a lot of ground together to get from Machu Picchu at the start of Anna’s trip to Galapagos at the end, but these two highlights in our trip we will never forget and will never forget spending them with such a great friend.  We were grateful for the presents Anna brought too(camera, underwear, Cadburys!), but mostly her presence.

Goodbyes being done quickly (…. just like the old saying about bandaids…) Matt and I hopped on a bus 5 minutes up the same road from the airport to the bus terminal for our 7 hour trip to Baños.  It was Matt’s birthday the next day and we wanted to get here as it was a well known destination to go canyoning!

When we got to the station, there was a bus leaving in 5 minutes.  We were aware that there were a few different routes to Baños, some less desirable than others and knew that most of the time the bus tout will give you the answer you want to hear such as: “Does this bus go direct?”  …. “Yes, Yes, of course”.  Wise to this Matt asked the tout: “Where do we need to change buses” and to our surprise the tout replied “No, no it’s direct”.  Satisfied that we were going direct, we jumped on the bus leaving in 5 minutes.  Of course you can guess what happened…

In a town called Ambatos about 4/5ths of the way, the bus pulled up and everyone else got off except us.  We sat and we waited patiently until the driver queried why we weren’t getting off.  We replied we were going to Baños, our ticket clearly said Baños and so we were waiting for the bus to go to Baños!  After a bit of a “discussion” and with our ticket clearly stating “Baños” the bus driver sighed, took us and our packs over to a counter in the station, paid for our onward ticket to Baños with another company and told us the other bus would leave in 15 minutes.

About an hour later we left and arrived in Baños too late to get into our preferred hostel (but we got another decent one around the corner), but more importantly too late to organise anything for Matt’s birthday the next day.  We went straight to bed!

 

Day 168 – Happy Birthday Matty!

The day was off to a slow start as we were left with absolutely no plan, not for today or even for the next four weeks until we fly out of Barranquilla on 4 June.  We headed out around 10.30am to at least start Matt’s birthday with a nice breakfast.  We wandered around town and found not much open!  Strange… and then we noticed a sign on the door of the laundromat “Power outage in town 4 May, 10am until 2pm.  Open at 2.30pm”. 

We managed to find somewhere for some decent breakfast and at least have a wander around town, but after that we were bored!  We decided to take the opportunity, well were forced really, to go back to the hostel to use up the remaining battery power on the laptop and plan out the next few weeks so that we wouldn’t miss anything in Colombia (which we have very much been looking forward to).  So poor Matt spent most of his birthday planning onward travels!

At about 3pm when the power finally went back on, we took our 10 days worth of stinky clothes to the laundromat, organised some massages for later in the day so the day wouldn’t be a total waste and organised canyoning for the next day.

After the massages (pretty good), we got a box of red wine and drank it at the hostel while Matt chatted to various people on Skype and then went out for a pizza dinner – very special!

 

Day 169 – Happy Birthday Matty again!  The makeup birthday day.

Once again breakfast took an inordinate amount of time to be made in an empty restaurant, but even 5 minutes late we were still more organised than the canyoning place and ended up waiting a while past our scheduled 9am departure.  There were lots of others standing around in the office too, as the one guy scurried around scanning people up and down for size and handing out various bits of equipment.  Looking around the room, we weren’t quite sure how a few of the people would go with canyoning.  It turned out however that most (the unfit looking ones!) were waiting for their rafting trip and it was just three young Spaniards from the Canary Islands that were as crazy as us.

The minivan complete with raft and one guy riding on the roof dropped the 5 of us and our guide off near our canyon and continued on its way.  We were wetsuited, helmeted and harnessed up and were soon trudging about 20 minutes further up hill from to the entrance of the canyon.

Our guide, who only spoke Spanish, explained all the necessary rope skills, knots and signals.  Although neither of us has been canyoning before, it was easy to understand what he was explaining given we already knew what to do - it was the same as rock climbing and abseiling.

Canyoning, it seems, is a mixture of bushwalking down a wet canyon combined with abseiling down waterfalls and sliding on your bum down any short tricky bits.

The view from near the top of the canyon.

Looking down the top of the canyon.

On the second waterfall I lost my footing and fell into the waterfall.  I now know exactly what its like to have a whole bunch of water pounding you in the head while you scramble on the wet mossy rock to find some footing.  The only way out was to just keep lowering myself down until I was under the other side of the fall, get some footing and then launch myself back out!  No injuries though, just some decent rope burn on my little pinky.

Matt in action.  It was at about this point on this waterfall that I was somewhere in the crevasse to Matt’s left being pounded in the head.

Me staying clearly out of the waterfall this time… learnt that one the hard way!

The guide picked up on Matt’s skill pretty quickly and tried to get him to go head first down the last waterfall!  From experience with abseiling, forward just hurts more than it is fun, so he politely declined.  It didn’t stop the guide from doing it though!

Matt being stylish (and carrying all the guide’s equipment so the guide could run down head first!)

Show off!

We were back in town for lunch and on a bus to Quito shortly after.  We were looking forward to our hostel, Huauki, as it was next door to an all you can eat Japanese place in the Mariscal (restaurant/gringo area) but when we got there they had accidently taken another booking and were full.  The lady owner was extremely apologetic and as it was getting on dark, she rang a friend with another hostel and drove us there in her car.  The hostel she had organised was our second choice anyway, so we were more than happy, it was just a little bit of a walk from the Mariscal.  We got settled and went out for the other type of food we always crave in a big city…. Indian.  It was good!