Futursama: Ecuador time

I quickly noticed that in both volunteer groups in Ecuador and the one in Italy it was always the Americans that would interrupt the enjoyment of dinner, walking down a street, relaxing in the sun, with the question of "what's our schedule for tonight" or "when are we starting work" or "what else are we doing later" you get the point. Everyone else was able to just enjoy the moment, but not us USA'ers, nope, we had to get moving, get organized, talk about the time tables, the work for the next day, and all the logistics. Not that I am any better while at home, but I was able to transcend my native roots and join the rest of the world and relax. With this adoption of relaxed time tables I decided that I would take 4 days to travel between the Jatun Sacha reserve in Tena and the La Hesperia reserve in the Cloud forest instead of the previously arranged 1.5 days. Certainly this would reduce my volunteer time from 10 days to 7 but you know, I didn't think they would care much. So I joined Sakshi, Leigh, and Natalia, who were staying a while longer in Jatun Sacha for a long weekend in the town of Banos. Banos sits beneath an active (and recently very active) volcano which has created some hot springs and is a major touristic town. Its located south of Quito by about 3 or 4 hours and I think it is still considered to be in the Highlands. Within an hour of arriving we had found our hostel (Plantas y Blanco) or something like that, arranged for a morning of cascading (repelling down waterfalls) and found a great place for dinner called Casa Hood. If i knew what i know now, i probably could have set up a volunteer program for my self at the local library and enjoyed the town of Banos for an entire month and lived for around 8 dollars a day on very good food and a nice clean hostel. In contrast to Quito, I found the people very friendly and the streets safe. Almost each night we were there we walked around by ourselves down deserted streets between 1 and 3 am feeling completely safe. Such a nice change from the streets of Quito where anytime after 4pm its better to take a taxi.

The cascading excursion consisted of 5 waterfalls. 12 meter 18 m, 25m, 35m, and a 12m that we more or less slid down with some assistance from our belayors. One of these guys (excuse my french) was a total bastard. On the last waterall he asked if I wanted to go slow or fast. I said fast of course and he really let me go, until about 6 inches before splashing into the pool at the bottom he slammed the brakes on the harness which basically required me to go through puberty again to get my balls out of my chest cavity. I could have killed him if he weren't hold my life in his hands. The other four were great. Even with some climbing experience the adreniline started to pump each time I stepped over the ledge of the waterfall and began to decend through the water and mossy rocks. On the 3rd fall they set up a zip line which we were attached to in addition to our main rope. Second only to Ecuador public transportation, this was the most dangerous thing I did in South America. A large section of this second rope had completely lost its sheething and the the core of the rope was exposed. Oh this reminds me, before we left they handed me harness with my safety rope (the one used to attach yourself to the cliff while tieing into the repelling rope) tied to it was a glorified overhand knot. real nice. I found one with a double figure eight before we left.

That evening we got some dinner at a mexican resturaunt then toured the town a bit. We headed backto Casa Hood from happy hour and a band came in off the street and played for a while . We talked with them a bit and they told us that later that night they would be playing at a bar on the other side of town. After listening to them we headed back to the hostel and hung out for while on the terrace until it started to rain a bit.

Next day we rented bikes and traveled down a highway to look at waterfalls. below are some pictures from that trip.
All in all banos and the surrounding little friendly towns was one of my favorite places so far. Very friendly people and beautiful landscape.