Los gringos en Baños

Since the last post at the beginning of the week, we´ve had more class, of course, but also a lot more fun, both here in Quito and in Baños, a small touristy sort of town farther up in the mountains to the south.

Before I get to Baños, though, I have to tell about our adventures in la Plaza Foch in Quito on Thursday night. La Plaza Foch is basically the place where a lot of young (and a few not so young) Quiteños go out on the weekends. More importantly, though, some locals refer to it as Gringolandia, or the Land of the Gringos (white people, or North Americans). Perhaps because it was a Thursday, though, we didn´t see as many of our fellow Gringos as we thought we might. We did get a letdown when the waitresses at the Mexican restaurant where we ate gave us the English menus. It´s pretty hard to seem anything but American when there´s a huge group (half blonde) of chicos swarming around the most touristy part of the city, usually being ridiculously loud. Anway, being obvious gringos didn´t ruin our night, after we ate we barhopped for a few hours and then we (or I did anyway) got back to my host family before midnight, lest I turn into a calabeza. Or something like that.

Entonces. Friday, after class and after I had time to catch a bus to my house and back to exchange my books for weekend clothes, We (the majority of us here from Ole Miss, minus a few who decided to take a relatively pricey trip to the beach) all loaded up on a charter bus and took a three or four hour bus ride to Baños, which is not terribly far as the condor flies, but takes a good while considering that roads at least in this part of Ecuador have to wind up and around mountains and pretty much stop in every little town. When we finally arrived at about 7, we checked into our hotel (which was estupendo) and most of us went out to eat at pretty good restaurant that had mostly Italian food (despite being called the Café Dusseldorf..go figure). After we ate (mine was pollo milanesa, a sort of fried filet of tenderized chicken, with pasta) we made our way to a kind of weird bar called the Leprechaun, where the girls got hit on by traveling Irish accountants (I can´t make this stuff up.), and when we were all leprechauned out we went back to the hotel where I´m certain we kept everyone up with our antics until pretty late (here´s looking at you, Shruti and Brock).

On Saturday, after much delays waiting around for everyone to check out the hotel, we explored Baños for a little bit and about 10 of us decided on visiting what Baños (literally, the Baths) is supposedly famous for, its "hot springs." Come to find out, at least with the ones we found, "hot springs" was more like "heated pool filled with mineral water and tons of Baneños." If you can imagine about 8 super awkward looking gringos in tight wad in a pool, being stared at by about 200 ecuadorians, you´ve got pretty much the right image in mind. When we left the "hot springs" we rushed back to the hotel for quick showers (the water was a little sketchy) and got ready to take a tour of the area on a chiva, which is sort of a bus with open sides, painted crazy colors and playing super loud dance music all the time (people rent them for birthday parties and holidays usually). This, though, was basically a waterfall tour, one where we saw some pretty amazing cascadas and mountains, too, all enormous and breathtakingly beautiful. The most literally breathtaking part, though, was this sort of open gondola ride that wooshed us over one of these huge gorges where the waterfall ended up. Surprisingly, it wasn´t as scary as it was just an awesome rush. The chiva tour was the best 4 dollars I think I´ve ever spent, and it sort of made me realize how big everything in the world really is, especially outside of what seems to be the orderly, contained environment of the U.S.

We went out again on Saturday (although with much less fervor, in my case, since I was about dead), and returned to Quito on Sunday afternoon after buying a few souvenirs (got you something for your classroom, Anna Laurie). Since then, it´s been back to the grind, and I had to write a paper that Sunday night, and am currently in the middle of a group project for tomorrow. If I can get the internet working well at home, I´ll try to post some pictures of everything on here and/or on facebook tonight. Hasta entonces!