Wed Dec 27

Ok, that last entry was ridiculously long, so I’m going to try to keep this one to a more reasonable length. Dave told me I’m going to scare people away if I keep writing pages about the most mundane parts of our trip. I know that no one really wants to read about them in excruciating detail, but the mundane parts of the trip are my favourite parts (I also like the slow parts in books and movies) and this is, after all, my diary as well as our blog. Anyway, I’ll take a stab at brevity and see what happens.

Today we got up at around 9 am and had breakfast upstairs in our hostel. They make the most delicious homemade bread here, I love it so much. The coffee is almost bearable, too! Dave needed to work for a bit so I went to an internet café and posted up our blog. After that, we set off on a hike up one of the mountains. It was a beautiful hike with the most amazing views of Baños and the surrounding mountains. Despite the fact that it was a very sttep climb, it was a pretty easy and relaxing hike.

















We had planned to do a 3 hour hike, but after about 40 minutes we reached a plateau where there was a church on the side of the mountain. Beside the church there were also two quirky little homes that doubled as cafés. Both were painted in very bright colours and advertised food and beverages, but they appeared to be empty.




















We were both really hot and thirsty, so we approached the more colourful of the two buildings to see if anyone was there. We walked up the rickety steps to the deck, where there were a few tables, a lot of random junk, and what might as well have been a petting zoo. There were two (very aggressive) large white ducks, a big rooster, a hen, several tiny little chicks, two dogs, and three cats. The ducks were chasing the hen and chicks incessantly, and the rooster would occasionally step in to fight the ducks. One of the cats was sleeping in a big nativity scene that was set up outside the house. That was pretty funny because it was a pretty elaborate nativity scene, complete with all the main characters, little farm animals, and even some hay. And then there was this big cat that had knocked over Mary and the Wise men and had made a nest in the corner. We pointed out to the woman of the house that the cat was in the manger, and she laughed and responded that the cat thinks he’s el Niño Dios (Baby Jesus).

One of the other cats was absolutely nuts. As the woman of the house later told us, the cat “no es normale.” With every step he took, he lifted alternate paws and swatted at the air, as though he was constantly swatting at invisible flies. He was also licking something invisible in the air in front of him and making other strange movements. I asked the woman what was wrong with him, and she told me a very elaborate story, which of course I only understood a small part of. The gist of it was that the cat had gotten brain damage when he was a kitten, and he’s been insane ever since. Very sad.

Anyway, we sat on their deck and chatted (or tried to chat) with this very nice woman for quite awhile. The deck was right off of their living room, where they were sitting watching some kind of crazy soap opera on TV. Dave ordered a beer, which turned out to be gigantic, so I helped him with it. I ordered a pineapple juice, but when the drink arrived I realized that it had probably been made with tap water (a definite recipe for illness). The people who lived there were so nice that I didn’t want to offend them by not drinking it, so when no one was looking I dumped it down a crack between two boards on the deck. That seemed to have been a good idea, until one of the dogs came over and wouldn’t stop sniffing and licking at that spot on the deck.

After sharing a giant beer and chatting with this woman for about half an hour, we got lazy and decided to head back to town instead of finishing our hike. Back in town, we had a snack and then we went for massages (after all, we hiked for a whole hour and a half…we clearly deserved massages after that level of exertion!). I am absolutely obsessed with massages, as most people who know me know, so of course I had to take advantage of the good massage prices here. We could only get half an hour each, which cost $12 per person. Carmen was very nice and gave a decent massage, although not fantastic (Nicki, I miss you!!!). She did jump up on the massage table and straddle me at one point, which I found funny (and Dave was disappointed that that move wasn’t something special she did just for him, especially given that she asked him to remove his underwear prior to the massage!), but other than that it was just a regular old massage.

After the massage and a bit of shopping, we met up with a Swedish couple (Bibi and Tobias) who we had met and chatted with on our hike. They told us about this crazy restaurant they had found, so we met them there. The restaurant is in an artist’s house. The exterior of the house is painted bright, bright yellow, and the restaurant itself consists of a fairly small room with half a

dozen tables in it. The room is filled with his artwork, all of which is for sale. We marvelled at the number of different styles reflected in his paintings – if one looked at his room full of paintings, s/he would assume that they were done by about half a dozen different artists. The price variation was amazing, too: the paintings ranged from $25 each to $25,000 each. I’m not kidding! (In the photo, the painting with the large pink frame is the one that was $25,000!)

Anyway, the meal there was a real experience. The owner of the house brought out these hand-painted work-of-art menus for us to peruse. Everything had crazy names like “Explosion Vegetariano” or “Concierto en A Major” with no description of what the explosion or the concierto entailed, so we basically just had to guess. When the artist/owner came out to take our order, we tried to ask him about the dishes, but it was difficult to understand what he was saying because he spoke (in Spanish, of course) so excitedly and in such detail about each dish. Dave just ordered what he recommended and I ordered what Tobias was having (they had arrived before us and were eating when we arrived).

We were the only ones in the restaurant – Tobias & Bibi had been there 3 times already and were alone each time. Anyway, about an hour later our food finally emerged, looking like works of art. They were both delicious vegetarian concoctions. Despite having read that Ecuadorian wine is to be avoided at all costs, Dave and I also ordered a glass of red wine each. Dave was able to choke his down (“Just pretend it’s not supposed to be wine and imagine that it’s some kind of exotic local alcohol!”) but I could not tolerate it. After careful analysis, I have come up with a recipe for replicating this wine: ½ cup of grape Kool-aid, ¼ cup of Coke, 1/8 cup of grape cough syrup, ¼ cup of rubbing alcohol, and a dash of the cheapest cooking sherry you can find. The experience was fun, though, and we stayed late and chatted with Bibi and Tobias in the hopes that the pouring rain would subside enough for us to make it home without getting drenched. No such luck. Anyway, so much for brevity – maybe next time. Hasta luego!