Ecuador I

I realize that in the 11 days I've been in Ecuador I haven't gotten a chance to post anything about this beautiful and amazing country. It's really a shame because I've gotten a chance to see a lot of great things here. Unfortunately, I've also spent the last 4 days in a hotel room quite ill and 4 hours last Thursday in a hospital in Quito. However, I'll try to back-track a little bit and fill you guys in on what has been going on:

Quito 1/7-1/9

It's amazing after how being in developing countries for so long coming to Quito could feel like living in the lap of luxury, but it did! It is also just a really beautiful city—flying in over the mist covered mountain peaks was our first experience here, and it only got better. The city itself is enormous, and it feels almost like a city in the U.S. There are many small shops, parks, and inter-city buses everywhere, much different from the rural areas of developing countries. It also has a thriving tourist industry so for the first time in a month we actually saw other gringos. Our first night there we were craving a little bit of culture and so went to see the Quito Chamber Orchestra. They were fantastic, and it was quite an experience.
I hung out in the park for a little bit the second day, and saw a man speaking out about the politics of Ecuador who was drawing a bit of a crowd. It wasn’t an angry mob or anything, in fact they were laughing and joking around quite a lot, just sounding off about some opinions. I was sitting about 50 feet away enjoying the sun and relaxing when a big National Police motorcycle with two men decked out in camo and boots and bazooka-looking rifles drove straight across the grass toward the crowd. At first I was really worried that a violent breakup of the crowd or arrests were going to happen because these national policemen were not fooling around—they had black masks to cover their faces, the guns, and walkie-talkies with which they were obviously communicating with someone at headquarters. Thankfully, they just surrounding the crowd to kind of evaluate what was going on, hung around for about 20 minutes, and then took off again. They definitely took note that we (tourists) were within eyeshot, and I wonder if that didn’t have something to do with their mellow reaction.



Banos 1/9-1/12

Saturday we headed out for Banos, a little town well known for its hot springs that attract Ecuadorian and extranjero tourists alike. Banos is located in the middle of a valley right next to an active volcano that threatens to erupt at anytime (which we didn’t know til we were already there), and has erupted I think twice in the past ten years. You can hear the volcano at night roaring and erupting bits of lava. It was so loud that at first I thought it was the sound of an approaching thunder storm.
We took a bus from Quito to Banos, an easy 3 hour trip—made even easier by the fact that in Ecuador, because it is really a “developing” versus “non-developed” country (aka richer), they actually have real greyhound-esque buses instead of the charming Chicken Buses of Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The main draw of this town was the hot springs and the cheap massages, and we fully enjoyed both of these attractions. In the hot springs actually we were practically the only gringos who went swimming in the hot mineral water, everyone else were Ecuadorian tourists or people from the town. Probably the stench of the mineral water and the fact that its swum in by probably over 300 people a day with no chlorine in the water to speak of scared all the other, more sensible, gringos away. But we chalked it up to a cultural experience.



We hiked, rented a go-kart to tour the town and surrounding roads, and generally relaxed and enjoyed for a few days, before heading down towards the Amazon. More to come soon.