Life in Quito is still going just swell. The contemplation of remaining here has begun in my mind, so now it's just a matter of convincing the parentals and making sure I have sufficient funds. School, while still unbelievable intriguing due to the number of extremely hot Latina women, is becoming just another semester of mundane classes and doing the same in-and-out procedures that make your head numb. I am constantly making more and more Ecuadorian friends, which is probably the only reason I am enjoying myself so much. The kids here really now how to throw down and have a good time, and I seem to fit in. My host family continues to treat me like a king. And life here just keeps on getting better. So instead of writing about the city life, I have decided to write about my adventures outside of the city of Quito.
The second week I was here, the group of international students, a.k.a. "whiteys", that I clung to and I decided to head to the quaint city of Baños, about a three hour bus ride away. We arrived on a Friday night and immediately found a hostel that suited our tastes. For six dollars a night we stayed in one of the most luxurious hostels I have ever seen or heard of. While the bedrooms were of the same class as a fairly nice hotel, the view is what sealed the deal. The fourth floor patio, welcome to all late-night partiers, was situated within fifty yards of a one-hundred meter waterfall. With no development behind or around the hostel, the waterfall felt like our own, and it definitely made the night much more soothing. The next day we all coughed up dinero for a seven hour bike ride, including a superabundance of beautiful cascades and waterfalls. The most amazing of the waterfalls required us to "Gollum" our way through a narrow crevice in the side of a mountain, but it was well worth it. At one point we were able to swim in the base of another waterfall, and although my manhood turned into tiny marbles due to the extreme cold, I haven't had as much fun swimming a long while. Along the bike ride I strapped on an Ecuadorian-made harness and took a leap over a Class 4 rapid, so there was no apparent risk of danger (That's sarcasm). We returned to the actual city of Baños fairley late in the evening, so after enjoying a little of the nite-life, we allowed our aching muscles to recover. The next day was replete with crappy weather and a sore body, so while the majority of the other gringos found a horse back tour for twenty dollars each, I stayed at the hostel and enjoyed some music and the next-door waterfall. While relaxing I met a girl from Canada who traveled South America in search of an education in Macramé. Of course, with my newborn dreadlocks, I had no option but to get an intricate weaving through one of my dreads. It turned out looking marvelous, and provided a nice cap on my weekend. I hope to return to Baños soon because our hostel was in the process of installing an Olympic-sized hot tub, and I have a feeling that I need to make a guest appearance.
Next up on the list of hot spots is Atacames. Atacames is the closest beach to Quito, about a six hour bus ride. After nine hours of traveling, we reached our sandy location. The weather was nice the whole weekend. We had the sun, the surf, and the sand, three of the things I miss most from back home. Unfortunately, and I'm not eager to say this, the beach was the nastiest thing I have ever set bare-foot on. With great stupidity, we traveled to Atacames without doing much research. It turns out that Atacames is home to fifty bars, all lined up next to each other with no room to walk between. All of the bars are open on all sides, more like giant gazebos. And nothing distinguishes one bar from the other, they all look amazingly similar. The only contrasting aspect of all fifty plus of the bars is the music they play. If you walk down the row, you will hear salsa, then reggae, then merengue, then classic rock, then back to salsa. How boring. I believe I forgot to mention that the entirety of these bars lined the beach. So any and every drunk Ecuadorian, when it was time to empty a bladder or throw away a bottle, simply had to walk ten feet onto the sand in order to do so. Yum. Not to mention that one day I even witnessed parents of a small child instructing their kid to literally bury all of the family's trash in the sand. All in all, if you're not a heavy drinker, I would advise you not to go to Atacames. You will not enjoy yourself, you may actually end up hating yourself a little more for wasting your time and money.
After the first two trips, largely in groups of international students, I decided not to travel anymore until I was able to do some with local kids, plus one morning I woke up and found my wallet pretty empty. It wasn't until this past weekend that I decided to take my third adventure, only a day trip, to the inactive volcano of Cotapaxi. Cotapaxi is one of the most famous volcanoes in the world, partly because of its history, and partly because it is a challenging undertaking for climbers internationally. Although the group was in did not do the climb to the peak, which would have required days and a background in climbing experience, we trekked the path to the base-camp refuge. It took a few of the other gentlemen and myself about 45 minutes. I can't say that the ladies fared as well, taking them about twice as long. We were blessed enough to relish in a light snowfall as we climbed, allowing the hot chocolate at the top to be the best drink ever to touch the back of my throat in my life. The climb up was made difficult by the infinitesimal amount of oxygen. I was told before that it would be a tough climb, but I did honestly expect to have to stop ever two minutes to catch my breath. The Cotapaxi trip was amazing, and the two dollars it cost to traverse the mountain was the best two dollars I have ever spent.
The last trip I took was spur of the moment. The night I returned from Cotapaxi I received a text message from a couple of Ecuadorian amigos. They were going to Mindo in the morning, a very humble town known for canopy tours and zip lines. We left for Mindo at six in the morning in order to get there in enough time for the tours. Nobody in our party of six decided to bring more than twenty dollars in cash, because carrying more than that means you'll lose more than twenty dollars if, and more likely when, you get pick-pocketed. Our greatest discovery in Mindo was that there was not a single ATM within an hour radius of the city. We bought our return tickets and some beer, not knowing that the house of a friend we were supposed to stay at was later going to bail ever-so-hard on us and we would then have to find a cheap hostel. At least the beer was cheap, twelve 24oz beers for eight dollars. What a deal. We found a hostel and literally spent the rest of the day walking through the dense forest, almost a jungle, receiving a fair share of mosquito bites and pleasant visits from my best friend the spider. We found a free salsa bar to occupy our night, as we were on our last 15 dollars for the group by 3:00 in the afternoon. After dancing the night away, we threw in the towel. The next morning we spent the remainder of our pool on a one way ticket into the jungle where we would be able to bush-wack our way to a series of waterfalls and natural springs. The waterfalls we found were absolutely breathtaking, and there were very few other people, so we took advantage of the opportunity and enjoyed the waterfalls to their full extent... we jumped!! At least twenty meters of pure adrenaline, followed by another episode of my manhood shrinking due to Mother Nature. We had to plead and bargain our way to get back to the city with only five dollars leftover, but we were able to do so in the bed of a pickup truck. We made it back to our bus stop as the bus was taking off, but thankfully they were nice Ecuadorians and stopped for us.
My trips thus far have been exciting and new for me, and also very cheap in comparison to any trip you can go on in the States. I have one more plan to travel to a remote beach for our vacation in November. The beach is called Canoa, and there will be plenty of sun and surf and very little trash, or so I've read and been told. Hopefully it's not a lie. I will probably adventure into more parts of Ecuador if I stay for another semester, but more or less I have visited the main regions of Ecuador and often a fell for what the country is like all over. I love this place...
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