El Asilo and Baños

Last week I had my first trips to the old folks’ home, called El Asilo (or Hogar) Corazón de María. I was sort of dreading it and was a little nervous. We got there and went straight to work. The six of us were sent to the therapy room where there were ancianos (old folks) who were just getting some exercise by walking around, or were getting joint massages, or were merely just coloring. I started talking with a man named Ramon Gonzalez (what a coincidence, one of my volleyball friends back home has the same name). This Ramon was 80 years old, was about 4 feet, 6 inches tall and weighed probably 90 pounds. So he was HUGE. He was extremely difficult to understand because his voice was so muffled and unclear. We talked for about an hour and I helped him with his coloring. In that hour I discovered that he was originally from Quito, he is un huérfano (orphan) and that his children never come to visit him. It was sad but I was happy that I was there to talk with him because he seemed very pleased to have a young person to talk with. After an hour, we went to go get him lunch in the lunch room and I helped pass around food and clean it up after too. This took the rest of the hour that I was there. Some of the men (was a men’s cafeteria) were very friendly and gracious while others were not so much. At the end of the meal, one man got up and started dancing with my friend, Meghan to the music being played. It was pretty cute.

Afterwards, we didn’t have time to go home for lunch so we went back to school and got lunch at a nearby hole in the wall restaurant. These restaurants sell almuerzos (lunches) daily for about $2 max and they usually offer two options of meat and then rice, soup, juice, and sometimes a postre (dessert). Last time I got a meal called guatita with some meat and potatoes and rice but I wasn’t really sure what the meat was. I’d had papas con cuero before which is potatoes and pig skin but this was a little different. I later found out that it was cow stomach. It had a very strange spongy texture but the sauce was good. It wasn’t like tripe, the normal cow stomach I’m used to but it was fairly decent.

Tuesday night Paul, Meghan, Danny, Zang, and I went back to Vista Hermosa in Old Town Quito (also known as el centro historico and Quito Colonial). This time it was night so we got a great view of Quito all lit up including many of the churches that I’ve visited like La Basilica, Santo Domingo, y San Francisco. I didn’t bring my little tripod so it was hard to get clear pictures of these places at night unfortunately. At Vista Hermosa we all shared some empanadas and canelazo and I decided to partake in the empanada de viento which had an amusing English description of “big pasty of hot cheese.” I had to try it of course. It turned out to be a huge elephant ear with melted cheese in the middle and it was pretty tasty. I’m happy to say that I’ve now experienced the big pasty of hot cheese.

Empanadas y Canelazo

My big pasty of hot cheese

On Thursday we had salsa lessons again which were great. We learned a few more moves like one where the guy and the girl switch place then another where the guy twirls the girl with a fancy little move then they switch places. I was pretty bad at first and I think our instructor hated me but then I had a eureka moment and got fairly decent at it. Afterwards, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant called Uncle Ho’s and found out that it was owned by an Irish guy who was pretty cool.

On Friday morning we embarked on an AWESOME trip to Baños, which is a small tourism/adventure town about 3-4 hours away. We got on the Trol-e bus at 7 which took us to the south Quito bus station about an hour away and we bought a $3.50 bus ticket to Baños. When we got there at around 1:30 we checked in to our hostal (inn) called Plantas y Blanco which costed $6.50 per night (pretty spendy, I know). They were pretty full but still had room for us. Eight of us ended up splitting up into 4 different rooms which we shared with other random travelers. I ended up staying with a guy from England, a guy from Canada, and a guy from Germany who smelled terrible. The English guy and the Canadian guy and I had a conversation later about how horrible he made the room and hallway smell.

Random restaurant at the bus station that likes Che Guevara

Paul and I ready to go

Quick snooze

This is the hostal we stayed at

Ok not really, THIS is the hostal we stayed at

Basilica from la terraza

La cascada de la virgen de aguas santas

            After we checked in, we went to lunch at a place called Swiss Bistro which was recommended by my teacher. It was an awesome cow themed restaurant and I got some pictures of it too. I ended up getting what I thought was going to be a sandwich with ham, pineapple and cheese but turned out to be a skillet of those ingredients plus potatoes. It was quite tasty.

After that we went to one of the nearby adventure booths and found a guy that would take us puenting (bridge jumping) for $12. It’s not bungee jumping but rather swinging like a pendulum underneath the bridge from a rope attached to a harness you wear. I was super excited about it while most of the others were pretty nervous. We got to the bridge and saw how tall it was (90 meters!) and Paul and I volunteered to go first (two people jump from different spots at the same time). They strapped on the harness and we went to go stand on the railing. Once I actually got up there I got a little nervous. It was a little windy and it was at that point that I realized that I was about to do. Right when I jumped off I had the full realization of that I did and I thought to myself, “holy crap! You just jumped off a bridge. What are you thinking?” But after a second or two of free fall, I swung under the bridge and swung back and forth until they let me down to a ledge where I unhooked myself from the rope. Jumping off that bridge was the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve ever had in my life and it lasted for over an hour after. So far, it is my favorite thing that I’ve done here so far. Everyone in our group did it and there were several who were absolutely terrified at first (and especially when they stood on the ledge) but everyone enjoyed it immensely after they worked up the courage to jump. I took my camera with me and filmed the jump but I don’t think it turned out that great. The internet is really slow here so it’d probably take an eternity to upload it so I’ll probably upload a bunch of videos when I get back to the states. 

View from the bridge

view from ledge below the bridge

Weeeeee!

            After we jumped off the bridge we headed over to the thermal baths (reason the town is called Baños). The place was called La Piscina de la Virgen (Virgin’s Pool) and there were 3 different pools with different temperatures. One was pretty cold at about probably 65 degrees Fahrenheit. One was similar to a hot tub at probably a little under 100 degrees and the other was super hot at probably around 110 degrees. The pools were located right next to a waterfall called la cascada de la virgin de las aguas santas (waterfall of the virgin’s holy waters) and there were tubes that took water directly from the waterfall and came out in some cold showers next to the pools. We stayed for about an hour switching from pool to pool and the cold showers. The waters look very dirty and gross because of all the minerals in them but we didn’t really mind.

After that we went to a pretty nice restaurant called Pappardelle which served pastas for about $4-5 and steaks for about $7-8. I got a steak for $7 and when they brought it out I was shocked at how big it was. It came with potatoes and veggies and cheese on top and I actually got full from it. I was quite pleased. That night we hung out in la terraza (terrace) on top of the hostal and then went out on the town because it’s supposed to have a pretty good night life. Every discoteca we went to was super crowded so our dancing was confined to a small space. It was still fun anyway though.

The next morning we got up at 8 and ate breakfast at the terrace which turns into a restaurant in the morning. I got some eggs, homemade breads and jams, fresh fruit, fresh juice, and coffee for the whopping price of $3. It was all pretty tasty. After that we met at 9 to go on a canyoning adventure. Canyoning is something that apparently is unique to Ecuador where you repel down waterfalls. We went to the adventure booth and got wet suits and harnesses and bussed over to the location. We had to take a 20 minute hike to the first waterfall and when we got there we had to do some sliding down on our butts because it was too steep to walk. Thankfully the harnesses had little diaper-looking things that made it easy to slide down. We were basically going through a super narrow canyon filled with beautiful waterfalls The first waterfall was pretty small and was a good starting point. We did a total of 5 waterfalls which got bigger as we went on. One of the waterfalls we took a little zip line ride over and another was pretty much like a natural stone waterslide. The whole trip took about 4 hours because we had a fairly large group of 15 people with 2 guides so there was a little bit of waiting time in between each waterfall because we had to wait for others to finish and for the guides to ready the equipment for the next waterfall. Overall it was a really cool experience and I really enjoyed all the green scenery. I didn’t bring my camera but the guides took a bunch of pictures of us so when I get those I’ll post them.

After that, Meghan, Lizzie (a random traveler from California in our hostal), and I went to the zoo nearby. It wasn’t a really large zoo but for $3 we got to see things like Andean condors, many birds, monkeys, jaguars, ocelots, mountain lions, and some enormous Galapagos tortoises. We took a little walk up a nearby hill to get a better view of the canyon right next to us and that was pretty cool too.

spider monkey

We went out on the town again that night but the next morning we got up at 4:50am to go to La Piscina de la Virgen again because apparently it is a really popular thing for locals to do. We got there and the place was packed with families. The biggest pool was filled with families teaching their kids to swim and others just playing around. It’s something that you would see at a public pool in the United States but probably at an hour like 1pm. We stuck around to see the sunrise at about 6ish which was nice. We didn’t actually see the sun because we were at the bottom of a big mountain but we could see it hit the mountains on the other side which was quite pretty.

After that, Meghan, Paul, Dominika, and I went on a hike at 7:45 up the side of the mountain to a lookout point called Bellavista (beautiful view) where we could see all of Baños and the surrounding mountainous valley. It was a gorgeous view. We then hiked a little more because we were searching for a small village called Runtun that we had heard about from our teacher which was supposed to have a nice little café in it. We couldn’t find it so we asked for directions and a lady pointed the right way. We got there and took a look real fast but didn’t stay long. On the way back down we came to a fork with a sign pointing to a place called Café del Cielo which was 522 meters away so we decided to take that route. It turned out to be entirely uphill (very steep) and it was pretty tiring. When we got up to it, we realized that it was a café in the village of Runtun and that it was closed until 1:30. Lucky us.

View of Baños from Bellavista

Runtun

Mt. Tungurahua, an active volcano right next to Baños

We got back down to the bottom, took a quick shower and then made some food for ourselves in the kitchen of the terraza. We spent a dollar on ten huevos (eggs) and a dollar on some pan (bread). We were going the cheap route because all of us had nearly run out of money. (By the time I’d got home that weekend I only had $2 remaining of the $100 that I took.) After that we visited la cascada de la virgen de aguas santas to take some pictures then we headed to the bus station to catch the 1:40 back home. Mi mama said that the traffic would be terrible on Sunday but it actually took less time to return. I ended up sleeping the entire way because I’d gotten so little sleep that weekend. But in the end todo vale la pena (it was all worth it).

Fun random rhino truck

cool mural

preparing the sugar cane

pressing the cane to make juice

kid pulling taffy. I definitely bought some

This morning (Monday) I went to mi mama’s school where she teaches to play fútbol with her students who are nine years old. The inter-school championship tournament starts this weekend so she thought the niños would like it if I came in and taught them a few things and played with them. Some of them turned out to be very skilled and it was pretty fun. Mi mama said that on normal days, the cancha (field) made of cement on which they play (that is only about 30 meters long) will have 3 games going on at once using the same goal. 6 different teams playing in that little space is nuts! The space was really confined but the ball never really went “out of bounds” which was fun to watch because if the ball went up a few stairs they’d just keep playing as if nothing happened. One thing that sorta made me sad was that none of the girls played. I didn’t really expect that because when I’d went to the fields at the park, there were canchas that had girls playing on them. Perhaps next time I go I’ll try to get them involved.

I don’t have a plan yet for this weekend so I guess I’ll play it by ear and I’ll write again next week. One more thing, if anybody reading this has any questions about pictures or about what I write, feel free to ask in the comments section. I love getting comments. J