We awoke in Baños to a horrible hangover and a lot of noise, there was a huge festival in the town (of course there was on the day we were hung over!). We decided to go explore, we weren’t sure what exactly they were celebrating, but boy were they enthusiastic about it! People were dancing traditional dances in traditional dress which was really entertaining to watch and the crowd were shouting and banging along to the loud music, which was a lot less fun for our headaches! But we soldiered on and actually had a really fun time, the locals seemed to enjoy us joining in, especially our friend Scott who is a really tall, very blond Australian who is so pale he’s almost translucent, the locals were fascinated by him wherever he went there were stares and eyes following and being the nice supportive friends we are, we obviously bullied him about it relentlessly, trying to charge people for photos with him.
We joined in the festivities and met a few local people through our friend Scott, he’s a musician (although he refuses to play wonder wall…) and has been playing guitar in local venues, where we get dragged along to meet everyone afterwards, normally getting evil stares from what ever group of girls happen to be swooning over him that particular day and afterwards we spend a lot of time taking the piss out of him until his ego returns to a normal size. We went out with some Ecuadorians he knew and had a fun night drinking and partying with them, me and Grace brought out our amazing beer pong skills out of retirement, along with our not so amazing salsa/dancing skills. Again we went to bed far to late and drank far to much, which has started to become a theme this week, I blame hanging around with musicians!
After a morning nursing our hang overs we made the assent to a high point overlooking Baños called the end of the world, there they have these huge swings the swing out over the edge of the mountain, they were absolutely terrifying! I played it cool and got in the swing and almost fooled myself I wasn’t scared until I went out at speed and let out a huge scream! A rookie mistake as Grace and Scott smelt my fear and kept pushing me higher and higher! We also had a race on some zip lines which was super fun until we hit the end of the line and nearly got thrown off.
We spent the next day organising our trip to the Galapagos Islands, as all we had so far were our flights, when our accomodation was sorted we booked a bus to Montañita on the coast where we planed to relax for the three days before our flights. The hostel we’re staying in here is right on the beach and has two donkeys and a horse that wander around like dogs, they come over for a fuss and you have to be careful they don’t eat your lunch or in one guys case, your box of cigarettes. The weather hasn’t been so great here, quite overcast and the sea has been really choppy but luckily Scott knows how to surf and offered to teach us while the waves were big, I was dubious after my last attempt, which consisted mainly of me being beaten up by the board and waves, but he was actually a really good teacher and I got more out of the first 10 minutes with him that the whole three hours we had before, and this time only cost me a few beers! (And a lot of being laughed at) but I managed to stand up this time, and didn’t have half as many bruises afterwards!
The next day was our last by the coast and as we were leaving that evening and everyone was going to miss us so much, they decided to throw a pool party for us. Someone mentioned they do that every week but we know it was for us really! It was a lot of fun and they had a surf competition in the pool which consisted of one representative of each nation jumping on a surf board and whoever went the furthest without falling in won. I was going to volunteer for the UK as I had now stood on a board once and was pretty much a professional, but apparently some guy had lived in Australia for two years and nipped me to be representative, he did not win which I think says it all really.
The party finished around four and we packed and headed via bus to a home stay near the airport, which is where I’m writing this now, although ‘home stay’ is overstating the niceness to be honest, I’ve seen better conditions in prisons! But it’s only for one night and tomorrow we fly to the Galapagos Islands!
I’ll keep you updated on what we get up to there!!!!
Lots of love,
Alice x