Bus Ride in Ecuador

So my bus from Quito to Baños was actually really pleasant. I was on a big bus, like a greyhound, I was in the second row and had both seats to myself despite us stopping and picking people up. I thought I had grabbed my IPOD but it wasn´t until we were pulling out that I realized I had left it on my bed. I thought to myself, ´it will be alright, I won´t really need it´ and I didn´t. . . .The bus ride back however was a different story. It wasn´t the same greyhound type bus but a more local, put together with spare pieces kind of bus, much smaller. First of all, I didn´t realize they assign you seats on the bus. On the way there, it obviously didn´t matter and no one said anything. No prob, I went to the back to find my seat, but wait, there´s a family of 4 sitting in my seat and the one beside it, oh well, I will just grab the row over and explain if anyone comes. Then an older local lady comes and sits down beside me. She gives me a big toothless grin and I just smile back with my best Canadian smile! I look out the window and there is a couple making out, I think, ´I sure hope they don´t get on my bus´, but wait, they are getting on my bus, and sitting right in front of me, excellent! The bus is full but as we pull out of the bus station there is a crowd waiting. The bus ahead of us (which is much larger and nicer) stops and grabs a few of them and then we stop but I just think ´we have no space, there´s no way people are going to get on´, yep the more the merrier here! A lady ended up putting her baby in the overhead space and secured it with her bags so it could sleep. I looked around and there is another family of 3 on the other side of the isle from us and the little girl, around 2, is sick and is coughing, sneezing, you name it, I could go on . . . I grasp for a window but I then realize I am the row inbetween both windows, crap! Then I realize that no one on the bus has their window open and we are slowly running out of oxygen . . . I look ahead and just brace myself for the road ahead when suddenly loud spanish radio comes on and starts blaring rapido spanish talking! Well it can´t get any worse, I better just hunker down and get ready for the ride ahead, wait, what´s that? someone else in the middle of no where wants on, sure, hop right on, plenty of room here, you can sit beside the driver (who by the way is sitting on a plastic lawn chair - oh ya, I have a picture!) Okay, on the road again, oh sheesh, couple in front of me is making out again, well I think it can´t last that long, they need to breath at some point. . . ´wait, bus driver, someone wants to get off the bus here, in the middle of no where, that´s right, please let him off so we can be the last people to see him alive´. . . . ´shake ur bon bon shake ur bon bon´ I look over and the 70 year old lady beside me whips out her cell phone which is screaming Ricky Martin´s big hit and starts talking in rapido spanish, okay now I´ve seen it all, oh and look, the couple just finished. People, you know it´s bad when the sound of Kei$ha on the radio warms your heart . . . wait wait, are we picking someone else up? ´Helado, aqua, lemonada, helado, aqua, lemonada, helado, aqua, lemonada´ as if we don´t have enough people on this bus already, we pick up someone who wants to yell louder then our spanish radio station and crawl over the people standing in the aisle to sell items. . . maybe the baby wants something in the overhead, why don´t you ask them . . . oh wait, there goes making out couple again . . . oh and the baby with the cold is starting to sneeze on the window again . . . someone, please open your window . . . we stop to grab more people (naturally) and these guys are carrying what looks like over 100 bags of milk, so of course, there´s always room for 2 more and 100 bags of milk, hop right on. . . . all of a sudden I see the sign for Quito, we´re here! And we´ve just lost our radio signal so perhaps it will be a quiet coast in, nope, spanish man with sneezing coughing baby to the rescue! His cell phone has music which can be played loud enough for all to hear . . . and there goes his baby sneezing again, and there´s goes making out couple all over again . . .I look over at my 70 year old lady waiting for her to do something but I notice she has simply gone to sleep on my shoulder, excellent! After 3 hours we are finally in Quito and it´s then and only then I realize this was the best bus ride ever! I don´t even know where the time went!

Baños

I´ve learned there are buses in Ecuador and then there are buses, I have now experienced both, more details to follow later though. I arrived late in Baños and it was dark but fortunately the city was very must alive and kicking. The city isn´t all that big and I had studied my map well so I knew which direction I wanted to go in to find a hostel to stay in. It was freezing there (like everywhere) so once I had a room, I had some dinner and then headed back for bed. I guess I am use to Toronto where it´s so flat and I knew that Baños was in a valley in the mountains but to actually wake up and see wall to wall green mountains surrounding you was more magical and amazing then I could have anticipated. The drop is pretty much straight down so you feel very much protected. And naturally there are evacuation directions so if anything happens you know what to do. I was out the door at 7:30 as the hot springs opened at 4:30am so I had already missed a bunch of time but I stopped and booked a one and a half hour massage and one hour facial on the way and was there and in the water by 8:30. Baños isn´t a huge city and it´s pretty flat so you can make it around pretty quickly! The hot springs were amazing. There was a freezing cold pool, a warm, almost bath water temperature pool and then there was a hot hot hot pool which you then went from and took a FREEZING cold shower and then got back in. I swear, they somehow found glacier water and shipped it up, it was sooo cold! But when in Rome . . . The pools were all full (expect the cold one which only had a few children who didn´t care about living) but there was this one guy who looked like he just climbed over the mountain and had never seen civilization. He had long hair and it looked like he should have been carrying a witch doctor stick. I am sure you all guessed it but yep, he became my friend. He spoke some english, well more then anyone else in the Country really, and he owned the only local health food store. He was very interesting and entertaining and he knew everyone there so I made lots of new friends! After all my treatments, I walked through the city back to the bus terminal. Although it wasn´t warm, the sun was out and everyone was out and about. I looked in a few shops and then grabbed the next bus to Quito and that is where my true bus ride in Ecuador began . . .

Quito

So in case you haven´t heard, it took me longer to get here then anticipated. I was suppose to connect through Houston on Monday but due to weather we were grounded in Alexandria Louisiana (that´s right, look it up!) for about an hour and a half. By the time we landed in Houston, my flight had taken off over an hour ago. There is only one flight a day from Houston to Quito so I had a full 24 hours to wait so I headed to my hotel! The next day went smoothly, my flight was extremely full as I wasn´t the only person to have not made it. We arrived in Quito late, around 11:40pm and once I cleared customs and realized my bags weren´t there it was almost 1am. My transfer to my hostel was there waiting and before I knew it I had arrived in the historical part of Quito. In true travel fashion, I was awake bright and early the next morning and started on my Lonely Planet walking tour. Unfortunately due to exhaustion and what seemed like an insurmountable climb up I swear a mountain to the Basilica, I opted to retire for the day and headed back to my hostel for a 3 hour nap. Fortunately my hostel is very centrally located in historical Quito so I am never that far away from it! The buildings in Quito are really magnificient, the city is so old and it has so much personality. Some of the smaller streets actually remind me of Europe a bit. The buses pass the hostel frequently and you will often hear "red off the red nose reindeer" to alert people that they are coming. As with some SA countries, if you want a bus, you merely step out and flap your arm around like a crazy person. No matter the speed the bus is travelling in, it will stop. Thursday morning I finally received my bags and then finished my walking tour which took me up into the new part of Quito. Thursday evening I headed to the bus terminal and caught a bus to Baños.