So on our first day in Banos, we took a 2 hour hike to the lookout and afterwards bought vegetables from the market for lunch. The weirdest thing happened in Banos actually: I had a crazy craving for sandwiches…but not the jam and cheese ones you get everywhere on this continent. I wanted the yummy bread with tomato, cheese, lettuce, cucumber, onions, olives etc etc. Basically anything that looks like a thick sandwich, subway style, but better (in my mind) ahaha. And so after our nice warm walk accompanied with a big sunshine, which ended up being very windy, my craving was satisfied ahaha. It is funny because normally you get tired of eating sandwiches…anyways.
Another funny thing that happened was meeting one of our dorm-mates. I had been looking for my contact case for lenses…and well I knew I had lost one inColombia, but I also knew I had a second one but could not find it anywhere…So I automatically assumed I had ditched it for extra space, dummy. So I was looking for one and the only farmacy which sold cases had a price tag of 6.17$USD. YA RIGHT that’s a night in a hostel, I was not going to pay that. So my Swiss roommate Daniella offered to lend me an extra one she had for that night. I rinsed it, took my contacts off and thanked her. Then, looking through my backpack, literally 3 minutes after this, in a pocket I never go into, I FOUND IT!! Well, that was a little embarrassing, but at the same time hilarious because for 2 days I had been looking for it.
After our walk, our sandwiches and chilling on the terrace, at night we went to the hotsprings. The water comes from the volcano and there are cold, a little hotter than warm and really hot water temperatures. At first we felt really stared at by older men, but then people started leaving and we met a French guy, German girl and their couchsurfing hosts. We all ended up going out for a drink and some food after. It was a really fun night.
The next morning, Cosima, Daniella and I all woke up early to take a 5h trek around Banos, up to the lookout for the volcano Tungurahua (alt.5000something meters and it is still active, you can also climb it with a guide
). We went up to about 2600m, had some more amazing sandwiches (again, yahoo!!!) and waited there for a bit to see the snowcap. Then we walked back down to Banos and hung out for about 5hours in a café, reading books, watching a movie until our night bus toGuayaquil. Ouff, that bus was not a good one. It smelled bad, it was almost full, the seats were all tight…then, during the night they blasted the air conditioning and it went down to 16 degrees….we did not sleep much at all! At least once in Guayaquil we were able to hop onto the next bus quickly enough, completely passed out on that one for two hours, then got another bus to finally arrive in Puerto Lopez on the pacific coast. It was cloudy, rainy and cold. Temperature wise, it was much better and nicer in the mountains. We just hung out, walked around a bit and relaxed, we were exausted!
La chola 