Had the whole dorm to myself last night and eventually got up after hitting the snooze button about 4 times and made my way on the trolebus to Terminal Quitumbe. Once there it took me about 10min to work out where the long distance buses leave from and where to buy a ticket from. I was fortunate enough to get straight onto a bus to Banos. Had I been any later I would have had to wait about 2hrs.
It took about 3hrs to get to Banos and the scenery along the way was amazing. We drove past Cotapaxi, a large conical shaped volcano which was snow capped and through a whole heap of villages with the last 40min descending down into a valley housing the town. It was just beautiful. First up I found a place that had chicken on its lunch special. Great value. For $2 I had chicken soup (although couldn’t bring myself to eating the actual chicken pieces as they were the bits that you don’t want to eat), main of fried chicken, rice, beans and salad and I passed on the dessert and juice as I was full from the first two courses. I wandered around the town for a bit and went and looked at some waterfalls just on the outskirts of town and had planned on going on several hikes around town, because on the map, they weren’t that long!
Well, I started on the first walk, a whole 750m to a look out point. Can’t be that hard right? How wrong was I? It was straight up a mountain with a 1:1 gradient and I struggled the whole way up. It was quite humid and hot in the sun and I was so relieved when I got to the top that I decided that the village that was only another 2km could stay where it was because I wasn’t walking any further! The amazing thing is that the whole way up this mountain, there were gates to peoples houses. The walking track was this skinny goat track and there was no possible way a vehicle could get to these homes. I couldn’t believe people walk this daily to get to and from the town. Then it all made sense when several horses went by and then I realised how the wealthy people get to and from their houses. Those who obviously can’t afford a horse, have to walk up and down daily.
The walk back down was much faster, but also a lot harder on the knees. I slid most of the way down but did manage to overtake some other walkers which made me feel a bit better. I followed this tiny man carrying a huge sack of potatoes (twice as big as him) all the way to the bottom. I have no idea how he managed to do it, although he probably does it on a regular basis.
I wandered around the town some more. Decided not to bother with any other of my planned walks because clearly I was going to struggle and so jumped on a bus back to Quito. The setting sun over Cotopaxi on the way back was great, although I was on the wrong side of the bus and I asked this girl to take a photo for me and out of 6 photos, only one was slightly less blurry than the remaining five. Luckily that one had Cotoapaxi in it because the others had only road and trees?!?! Once back at the bus terminal I jumped on a trolebus back to the Old Town. I had to change once because I obviously got on the wrong one initially but eventually found my way back to the hostel.
Still haven’t worked out how to make the hot water work, if it does at all!
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