Canopy, aka zip lines, BOTH of us!

Today we had an adventure. This is our last full day in Baños. We kept walking past GeoTours, the company that arranged Phillip´s paragliding adventure. Phillip suggested we find out how much a zip line tour would be. With my idea that we were looking for Phillip only, we went in. The GeoTour guy is so nice and reassuring, showing me the pictures and videos of a canopy tour... he (and Phillip) sold me on participating as well. So, this afternoon, we went on 6 progressively longer and higher ziplines thru the trees and over the river. Ziplines of 150 meters working up to 550 meters long.

Yep, that is me! Indianna Pat traded her leather hat for a safety helmet to do the ziplines. Since y'all would believe that he´d do it, but may not believe that I´d do it, Phillip had the camera most of the time to video and photograph me. I took the camera during one of the ziplines, so I do have video of him. Here he is after one of the ziplines, all decked out in the gear:

When I first sat in the harness after it was attached to the line, I actually felt secure because the straps come around one´s butt and feel like a seat. I was actually only terrified during the walk up to the last, and highest, zipline. A path cut in the side of the mountain, less than 18 inches wide in spots, with a drop down the side...One of the operators had me hang onto one of his straps (like the blue one you see on Phillip), not really to keep me from sliding down the mountain, but to make me feel better. It worked, and we made it to that last one. Not only did we see the mountains and waterfalls as we zipped along, but we also walked to waterfall:

GeoTours sent Oliver (I couldn´t catch the Spanish version of his actual name, sounded like Oliver to me) with us for two reasons: the operators didn´t speak English and they wanted Oliver to videotape the ziplines, as this one is fairly new and they didn´t have good quality video of it. When we finished out tour and the operators dropped us off at GeoTours, Oliver offered us a copy of the videos he had taken! almost 2 gb of files. Luckily, I just happened to have an unused 4 gb SD card and the SD to USB convertor in my pocket, so I have all the video that Oliver shot with his helmet camera. An excellent adventure, and video to prove it!

Hot rodding around Baños

Today was a fairly light day for adventures. Our biggest one was the rental of the dune buggy for an hour to ride around Baños.

Trust me, an hour was plenty. Baños isn´t very big, and this little hot rod isn´t very comfortable for our 53 year old bones! But it was fun to zip around, even if we probably didn´t get over 10 mph. It didn´t have a reverse gear, so twice we had to get out and push it back because we needed to turn around. We covered every road in Baños, and even got on the Pan-American Highway... for a few blocks.

After our dune buggy ride, we walked to the town´s waterfall:

As we got closer to the bottom of the falls, we saw the stairs (always stairs or a climb up in Ecuador!) around the base of the falls:

As Ecuadorian waterfalls go, this was a small cascade, but the townspeople or Ecuadorian (and American) tourists do come to take pictures of it. Next to the base of the waterfall were the public baths, with hot water coming from the mountain (remember, this is an active volcano area... Google ¨Tungurahua¨ and you´ll see what I mean).

These were the baths, full of people since today is Sunday. Baños is a weekend get-away for folks in Quito. We did not avail ourselves of the baths. Perhaps tomorrow if it isn´t as crowded.

I haven´t put a food picture or story in for a few days.... Here´s our lunch, which we sat in the park and ate:

It´s a bag with mote (the corn/hominy type vegetable) on the bottom, then roasted pork skin (think: cracklins´), topped with the marinated red onion salsa. The pork skins tasted like bacon, and the marinated red onion juice flavored the corn in the bottom of the sack. It´s a lunch portion for 50 cents, and the vendor provides the plastic spoon to eat it.

We still like our room and are getting the best sleep here that we´ve had in awhile as there are no car alarms or street noise to wake us in the middle of the night. I leave you with a picture of Phillip sitting on his bed, taken looking in from our open window:

Indianna Pat and Phillip ¨007¨ Wells

We did two activities today, horseback riding in the morning (both of us) and paragliding (Phillip only) this afternoon. I wore my leather hat we bought in Cuenca on the ride, hence the Ïndianna Pat¨ title:

The ride went up into the mountains,

then down to a waterfall which had a metal basket in which we rode across the water to the sodas and water, and the tree house, shown above.


view from the treehouse

Phillip did ride a horse, too, but he didn´t have a cool hat like I did!

He did, however, find the pretty ladies, like these three from Norway who were on the ride with us... all younger than Leslie and Robin.

Now for the 007 part of the day. I´m sure James Bond parasailed... well, now so has Phillip! Here he is getting into his flight suit... it was chilly up there as he started at about 3000 meters, and then went higher.

For some reason, they gave him a flight suit with the Spanish word for ¨pilot¨on it!



He had the camera with the SD card with him, so I don´t have pictures to post of his takeoff, but he took pictures and videos in-flight:

Those are his knees! And a picture, without his knees, of the active volcano near Baños taken during Phillip´s flight:

He loved every minute of his flight (it was tandem, he had an experienced actual pilot) and did make it safely back to the ground.

In all, a very fun day for both of us, Indianna Pat and 007 Phillip.

Blake, watch your guinea pig! They are tasty.

Last night, while I made the blog post, Phillip came running in, saying ¨Give me your camera!¨ I finished the post then went outside to see what he was watching. It was a parade of kids dressed in costumes.

I asked the Internet fellow, and he said it was an early Carnaval parade. The Ecuadorians celebrate Carnaval officially for the four days before Ash Wednesday. The country is 95% Roman Catholic and they take their religious holidays seriously. Some more of the kiddos:

Most of the groups danced when the parade stopped every few minutes. The moms were running thru with cups of water for any of them who raised their hand. My favorite was the following, which looked like mummies to me, and was sponsored by a hospital:

This morning, we decided to leave Riobamba and come early to Baños to spend and extra day here. It was a great decision, as we already love Baños. It rivals Puerto Lopez for a friendly, walkable town, but it is a little bigger and cleaner. Here is the outside of our room, I´ll get an inside picture later, as we are spending 4 nights here. That´s our patio table outside our door, right next to the flower garden.

Now, to the title of this blog.... this is the heart of cuy country. We told you we were going to eat roasted guinea pig, and we did. This is the little fellers on the roaster. These aren´t done yet, like the ones later.

The restaurant lady got a kick out of our interest, and offered to take a picture for us.

Notice the toasty brown skin. It was crispy like unbattered fried chicken. The meat was not gamey-tasty at all. One guinea pig fed both Phillip and me. That´s the sides, rice and potatoes, next to the guinea pig. I guess I have to tell you it tasted like chicken. It didn´t taste like beef or pork, but was quite tasty. I did let Phillip pick the meat off the head... notice the rodent´s little teeth next to Phillip´s finger.

This afternoon, we went on a chiva ride to see waterfalls. A chiva is an open-sided bus, usually used for tours or tramsporting mountain folks. This one was for the tours, so nothing obstructed our view. We - yes I said we - rode a cable car over one waterfall:

We saw several waterfalls and gorgeous mountain scenery. At the final waterfall of the tour, we had the opportunity to hike down to the base and swim if we wanted. We hikes down, but didn´t swim. Actually, we needed the swim AFTER we hiked back up the mountain to the chiva bus!

The waterfall put off a mist, so all our pictures have waterspots. I could have gotten closer, but I would have gotten wetter! We are so glad we decided on an extra night in Baños. We have even more things planned for tomorrow already!

16,404 feet above sea level and 22 mile bike ride

Today we took an active tour that involved climbing from 4800 meters to 5000 meters of Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador. We didn´t go to the summit, more than 20,000 feet, only experienced mountaineers attempt that trek. Phillip and I, joined by a 39 year old English man named Lee, were driven to the 4800 meter point by our guide, Louis. It was about a 30 minute drive out of town, passing alpacas:

and their cousins, the vicuñas. (a third cousin is the llama). In the following picture you see the vicuñas, which are only found above 4000 meters. The wool is only harvested from their chests, and only once every 3 years, so it is some of the most expensive wool in the world, over $400 a kg (2.2 pounds).

After making our way to 4800 feet, Louis let us out and showed us the path to the 5000 foot hut. He stayed with the bikes and made us lunch. This is the terrain and snow we started our climb from.

 It got snowier the higher we went

and the clouds rolled in as we climbed.

We did make it, with several stops for me to catch my breath (after all, airplanes pressurize their cabins at 10,000 feet and we went to 16,404 feet.)

I think Phillip was making snow angels ¨for the grandkids,¨but maybe he just collapsed!

The summit was obscured by the clouds and snow, but here´s the view from this point looking back the way we had come.

We walked back down, which was much easier and ate the delicious lunch that Louis had prepared, soup and sandwiches with coca tea. Then, it was time for the bikes!

Remember, it was cold enough for snow there, so we were all decked out in gear to keep us warm and safe. The total ride was 36 km (22.37 miles) with the first 8 km over an unpaved road formed with volcanic dirt and rock. (No pictures as it was foggy there) The remaining 28 km was on a paed road, but it didn´t have much traffic and Louis followed right behind us. No mishaps and the only incident was when Lee´s front brake went out, but we stopped right away and Louis got another bike down for Lee to ride. The terrain changed from what you saw in the vicuña picture to this:

As we got farther away from our mountain, the clouds began to clear from it, so I leave you with this view of the snow-covered mountain that we climbed and rode our bikes down from....

Travel day without mudslides

Yesterday, on our last night in Cuenca, we decided to splurge on dinner and get two skewers of meat from the lady vendor near the market. She remembered us, as she gave us local prices instead of ¨gringo¨prices for our meat. Each of these two plates, 2 skewers with potatoes (OK, the one on the left had more potatoes, but I was hungry on the walk back to the room to take this picture) cost us only $1.25. She had sauces that we brushed the meat and potatoes with, and who needs forks anyway?
While I composed yesterday´s post, Phillip found a leather store, so we went back to it after dinner and I bought a leather hat. All I need is the whip off the wall at the ranch and I can do my Indianna Jones impersonation.... ¨Snakes? I hate snakes.

Now, to today´s trip to Riobamba. We were only delayed a few minutes twice as crews cleaned the mudslides off the roads, so we arrived here in Riobamba on time, at about 2:30 pm. It was a 6 hour bus ride, but it was a comfortable bus. Here it is at our midway point stop:

The views during the trip were, as usual in Ecuador, spectacular. The following pictures show the clouds in the distance, at a lower elevation than us, then as we descend down the mountain into the clouds.

Some of the things we passed include the ever-present cows tied at the side of the road (aka bovine ROW maintenance):

the indigenous Cañari people walking along the road:

and the statue of a saint looming over a town (name this saint, or who does this look like to you?)

Our room in Riobamba is a room. The window opens into the courtyard of the hotel. That´s a good thing, because we won´t get street noise like we did in our Cuenca room. The room is small, so the pictures aren´t good, but this picture shows our door! The outside looks roomier than the inside.

That´s it for today, safe arrival, settled in, ready to tackle Mount Chimborazo tomorrow.