Baños & Atacames

So after leaving you people without an update for way too long, here is one again!

I really hope you guys enjoyed your Carnaval! It was a pity I could not be there as I really would have loved to celebrate it with you and it still hurts a bit that I could not be in Venlo this year, but! I have been doing great things as well, next to working for FuiReciclado.

Some of you already asked me do you only celebrate and be happy around there or do you also work, normally 5 out of the 7 days in Ecuador I work at FuiReciclado, but the nice thing is that there is something called weekend and since travelling and hostals aren’t that expensive here in Ecuador there is always something else on the program each weekend.

The weekend before, we went with the group of Dutchies to Baños, which is a funny name as in Spanish this also means “toilets”. After a 3,5 hour bus ride we arrived in Baños and had to go looking for a Hostal, preferably a cheap and clean one as sleeping and showering is the only thing that you really do there. So after we arrived on the Bus station of Baños we thought we went off to search for a great hostel, this wasn’t as difficult as it seemed as there was a guy at the bus station who could offer us rooms for $8 a night including taxes and breakfast, so we decided to take the offer and put our stuff down in our rooms. As every hostel in Ecuador this one also was no pay no bed, so first we had to pay for two nights and then we got shown to our rooms and we could put our stuff down and explore the town a little bit, as it was already evening and we were starving we decided first to go and find a restaurant . So we found restaurant “Abuela” meaning grandmother and went to eat something there which was especially to Ecuadorian standards quite good! After this we went into town to do some shopping for the girls, drink a beer and go and look for the other two who arrived at Baños later.

The following morning we started with renting our bikes for the mountain biking experience as we were about to set off on a 62 km trip from Baños to Puyo trough the Andean mountains. So when we shopped for inventory, tested our bikes, set the saddle to the right height, pumped up the tires and tested everything and were finally ready we were off, to get lost at one of the first turns already. But after setting right this mistake we were off for real and there were these beautiful mountain ranges in between us, everywhere we looked we could see mountains and the road going downhill what looked like in between them, after a few minutes already we arrived at a bridge with a hydro-electric plant at work, or in plain English a dam. Which was already amazing to see. After we cycled a bit further we came to our first big stop where we could see take some sort of cable cart over the ravine and get to the other side this way, but off course there was a more adventurous way to do practically the same thing, which was to go two by two and get strapped in to some kind of device so you could practically ”fly” over the canyon. After we stopped here and had a great view of the waterfalls and surrounding we decided also to do some of the activities available at the site. I didn’t necessarily had to do the two by two fly over the canyon so I opted for the cheaper but also nice option of getting in a cart suspended on cables to get over the canyon. We continued our journey after we were complete again just to see some awesome waterfalls and stunning canyons and rivers along the way. We wanted to stop almost everywhere to marvel at what lie between, in front, on top and underneath us, but there was just not enough time as we still had a lot of kilometers to go. And as we did not know at that moment we had to go up a lot as well even though they told us it was mostly down. Further down in the journey the going up a lot proved especially hard for the whole group as there were steep patches which just stretched for miles before going downhill again. Even though 90% of the trail was on asphalt luckily there were still some pieces which were dubbed “scenic roads” these consisted of brick roads or in some cases dirt trails which we had to follow. And as much as I want to explain to you guys how beautiful cycling trough the Andes is, I just can’t describe it in words. When you arrive at some of the most stunning waterfalls you normally only see in documentaries and wildlife programs, but then finally you see them in real life it is just a stunning moment.

As we cycled on and already got a bit tired we started to realize why the man who rented us the bicycles already said that we had to take it easy when we were still at breakfast. Some hills here are just so steep we just had to walk up them, and some downhill slopes were so long I actually really had to use the breaks as my bike just got instable from the sheer speed of letting the peddles go. After a long journey already there already were sounds that some of us didn’t want to continue for much longer, and so every little bit uphill became heavier and heavier. But then we also found a place where we could swim in the fore-runners of the great Amazon river so still willing I really wanted to do that, because it is almost like a once in a lifetime opportunity, but to get there we had to go up quite a steep hill again, where the sign said we only had to travel about 50 meters it was more like 500 meters, but finally we got there and swimming in the “Guatamala” was really great, it is like being in a real wild water track (like the ones you have in some “subtropical”-pools in Europe) but then it was real fast flowing water .

This experience really made my day and as we now only had about 25 or something like that more kilometers to go to Puyo we continued on our cycling trail. But not after stopping once again to the most stunning view of a bunch of small rivers getting together to form a maze formed bigger one. After this stop we heard that it was only 19 km or so to Puyo and there was only one hill left. So we went for it even though some or most of us were already way tired from cycling up and down the numerous hills we had to take. After a few more kilometers, there was finally a sign stating “Puyo 12 km” So together with Marieke, a Dutch girl we decided to stick together and to keep a good fast pace so we wouldn’t want to stop and go slower. As we did this the landscape flattened out, everything went slightly downhill and the cycling felt good again instead of painful, sore and tiring. After arriving at Puyo as the first two we had to wait for the other 6 as they were still behind cycling in their own pace. After they did catch up we still had to cycle into Puyo where they apparently never saw foreigners as they all looked at us as if we were from another world. Even though I can totally imagine that as we must have looked dirty and tired from the whole trip. So after we found the “center” of Puyo we placed our bicycles somewhere and decided it was time for a good meal and a nice cold beer.

When we finally sat down at a place that had good food the waiter told us that he did not have any beer. Can you imagine having cycled the whole day from 10:00 until 17:30 and the guy tells you he doesn’t have any beer…… But luckily he already came up with a solution, if you guys pre-pay the beer I will get them for you at my neighbor. So now finally we had and a beer and some good food. At the dinner table we were already joking about how to get the bicycles back to Baños, for example by cycling there. But the option we eventually chose was to get our bikes into the bus and take the 1 hour drive back to Baños. As we were all really tired that night we first had the idea to go into the bar, but after one drink we already went back to the hostel, to sleep. After this experience, it was already Sunday, time to go to the hot-springs at 5 ‘o clock in the morning. But it was great, even when it was really busy with a lot of Ecuadorians and Ecuadorian children splashing water everywhere. After this Niels and I had breakfast where we met the girls who were too lazy to get out of bed at 5 and after that they went to the hot-springs. After this it was already time to get back to Quito and to continue our normal lives on Monday again!

Atacames & Tonsupa

As you guys may know, they also celebrate carnaval in Ecuador, though it is a bit different than the carnaval we are celebrating in Limburg and Brabant. They are a bit more relaxed, they don’t really dress up and it is more about little children splashing water at you, we experienced this after the 6 hour bus ride to the coast where we got a nice apartment for these 3 carnaval days, The beauty about it, it was only 20 meters from the beach… for real 20 meters, not the 20 meters of the brochure ;-). As we arrived in the afternoon we had time to settle in our apartment for a bit and then had to the beach which was absolutely great of course as one of the pictures included may convince you off! That night we went to the most typical beach bar I had ever seen, straw huts palm trees & cocktails.. just as you would imagine being on a tropical island. We had a drink and we ate there, fresh seafood… mmm .

As the woman from the restaurant advised us we took a moto-taxi which is a motorcycle with a capacity in the back to carry more passengers than it was designed for. A bit like a TukTuk, these taxis are a real experience when you want to get somewhere. At first we thought the woman had called us a regular cab but this turned out the be the moto-taxi of course. Going for a drink in Tonsupa is a whole experience in itself you just walk into a bar where people start salsa dancing everywhere, and there is a guy with a big bottle of beer on his head just to show how balance he is while dancing. After this experience the next morning we were going to buy our tickets to go back to Quito in the next village and how better to get there than to make a long, long beach walk. So when we finally arrived in Atacames we got splashed with water by little children and the un-inevitable foam spray of course. It is like shampoo but it really smells bad when it dries up in your hair and or clothes. The carnaval weekend was mainly relaxing at the beach going to Atacames or Tonsupa to go out and lying on the beach of course, though Niels, Annemarie and I deviated from that program the last night, we just bought some beer, got ourselves a pizza and stayed at the apartment which was also great! So after this nice and restful long weekend it was already time to go back to Quito again.


Hasta luego