MUNGO EATS Latin America

Today we are sleeping at Cabanas Rio Yambala.  At the restaurant there are a bunch of business cards for different hostels, hotels, one beauty salon, and one book exchange.  Sean and I each have twenty cards and when we got back to the room, we played Closest to the Wall with them.   I lost, of course (I suck at those kinds of games), but we are just going to split them up again and play again after homework.  We each have our own “champs”, which are cards that won the most or stayed with us the longest.  My champ was “Hostal Santa Fe”, and Sean’s were “Hotel Rosim” and “Apartamentos Turisticos y Hostal Chordeleg”.  I don’t know why he had two champs, he just did.  I think that usually the best cards were the heaviest, which is Sean’s second champ, but the other two champs were both lightweight fighters. 

For supper we ate mashed potatoes under stew.  Our drink was a very light lemonade.  After supper we came back to the cabin.  I went a different way then Sean and totally freaked him out.  He could hear me but he couldn’t see me.  I finally convinced him to come back into the cabin and open the porch door.  There I was!  I took a different path, when it ended I went to the left and hopped over the railing onto the porch. Then we stayed out there to play with the cards because Mungo’s snorg would get in the way of our game.  Speaking of snorgs, there is a picture of a tapir in our room!

Last night we were in Banos (this word should have an accent over the n), which is a small town a few hours out of Quito.  Banos is famous for it’s hot springs.  It has hot springs because it is located at the base of a volcano.  It is located at the base of a volcano because…I don’t have an answer for this.  We’ll discuss this further  later. 

We are on a mission to get south, so we only had one night to spend in Banos, but we likely could have spent more there.  It is acute little town.  In the centre of town there is a beautiful old church, Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Agua Santa (man, I wish I knew how to get accents on my computer).

The church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who is credited with many miracles, such as saving the town from volcanic destruction.  Seems to me you wouldn’t need protection if you put your town elsewhere. 

We got to the town about mid-afternoon and spent the afternoon wandering the town.  One thing that was EVERYWHERE (except in any of the guide books), was handmade candy.  Every other shop had candy in it, and the best thing was that you could see it being made right in front of you.  Most of the shops had a large wooden hook nailed to the storefront and the candy makers would pull out their candy, loop it over the hooks, stretch it, twist it and loop it over the hooks again.

It was pretty cool to watch.  Tasty candy to eat, too. 

After supper we hit the hot springs.  The one we visited had a waterfall directly behind it.  The waterfall was really cold water, the pools were quite warm.  so if you were brave, you could alternate between cold showers and hot soaks. 

We left Banos this morning, with the destination of Cuenca in mind.  Cuenca is to the south, and our maps showed a highway branching off the Panamerican, to Banos, and an equally scaled road leaving Banos and rejoining the Panamerican at Riobamba.  Problem was, on our way to Banos, I never did see a sign for Riobamba, and leaving Banos, was the same.  We were looking for a road like this.

The only road we saw heading south looked like this.

   No highway.  As we pondered whether or not to try the dirt road, we saw a bus take the dirt road.  Well, it must lead somewhere if a bus is taking it.  Off we went.  it turns out it was the right road.  Why it shows up as a highway on the map, but  as a gravel road in real life, has to do with that volcano again.  It seems, when the volcano spews lava, the road gets covered, and instead of rebuilding the road, they just run a  grader through where the road once was and voila’ , a new road again.  It was amazing driving through this landscape, everything was covered in a thick grey dust, trees were burned up and at one point, we saw a house buried to the roof in lava.

So again I ask, why build a town here??  I know, volcanic eruptions don’t happen every day, but when they do happen, that’s it…game over, man!!  I will stick to living in my boring little Calgary, with no volcanic eruptions, no earthquakes, no tsunamis, almost no tornadoes, thank you very much!

We are just passed Cuenca this evening.  It was a long day of driving, even when we got out of volcano land, there was a lot of road work being done, and it was a slow go.  Also, we spent a lot of time zigzagging around mountains and back.  One section of road that we travelled was between Alausi and Sibambe.  There is a famous train ride in this area, to the Devil’s Nose.  I think it’s biggest claim to fame was that, until recently, passengers could ride on top of the train and admire the scenery.  A few years ago, a couple of Japanese tourists fell to their deaths, so no more riding on the top.  Way to spoil it for everyone!   It was hard to make out a lot of the scenery today, pretty foggy, but you get the general idea.

Tomorrow, we will hopefully have a shorter drive, we are thinking of getting to Loja.