Mountains and more mountains!

¡Hola! Como estas! Nosotros estamos bien!

Just updating you all here from baños! Thought we'd better give you the rundown on our last week!
Last Sunday we left Quito for a farmhouse just out of Machachi! This was part of our travelling Spanish program, so our teacher Sofia came with us for the week!

On the Sunday we were booked in to climb volcano Cotopaxi (the largest active volcano in the world at 5890m!!!) it's a 2 day walk to the top so we only climbed to the refuge at 4810m! As we arrived by bus, we got a glimpse of the snow capped volcano, however within minutes it was swallowed by clouds! It was so cold, it was hard to believe we were only a few hundred kilometers from the equator! As you can see we had to hike through some snow! This was my first time seeing and touching snow so I was pretty stoked! Once we reached the refuge and had some warm soup and hot chocolate, we returned to the bus to pick up our mountain bikes in order to ride the rest of the way down! Our bikes were rubbish! The brakes were back to front, and the rear brake was basically non-existent! And then it decided to snow in our faces, so for a while we were without vision and brakes, two important attributes to riding a bike! We got down in the end through a really shite road with lots of corrugation so my headache from the altitude loved it!!! Overall, it was really cool and I think the I am getting a little more acclimatised to the altitude!

On Tuesday we went on a horse ride around the farmland, which gave us some stunning views of the highlands around Machachi. Jacqui couldn't contain her excitement about going on a horse, and I tolerated the activity! Well, let's just say I liked it until the horse started trotting! I think the main reason why the worlds population exploded after the industrial revolution was because the men didn't ride horses anymore! My balls copped a flogging!!! Each trot was equivalent to a kick square in the nuts! Towards the end of the ride, I started to work out a way for it to be bearable, but my technique was far from graceful and required to much energy, so I resorted to pleading that we go slow!

On the Thursday we went on a tour of some of the local Indian markets out of town. The first market was a local animal market! It was where the farmers buy and sell their pigs, sheep, cows and llamas. In scenes reminiscent of four corners, we decided to move through these fairly quickly! We then went to another Indian market that sold clothes and crafts. It was ok, but they all sold pretty much the same llama jumper. After the the markets we visited a volcano crater called quilatoa. It was similar to the blue lake in mt gambier, except it was MASSIVE!!! We walked down to the beach to check it out, and then had lunch back up the top.

We were meant to return to Quito that night, however in a couple days we were due to head south to Baños. So we decided that we would stay in Machachi for the night and head to Baños in the morning. Two Israeli guys were thinking of heading there that night, so we made the hasty decision to head to Baños that night with them, as the hostel in Machachi was full apart from a room that costs $45 a night. So we got the tour bus to drop us off at the bus stop so we can get to Baños. I use the term "bus stop" rather loosely, instead they dropped us off at a toll booth on the main highway and told us that a bus to Baños would drive through soon. We would have stopped about 10 buses before we found one that went to Baños! All in all we were on the side of the highway for almost an hour waiting for our bus!



We arrived in Baños at about 11 at night, and the two Israelis took us to the hostel they stayed at a few weeks ago when they were here. As we checked in we noticed something peculiar about this hostel. Whilest it was clean and cheap ($7.50 a night incl breakfast) we realised it was a hostel run by Israelis for Israelis! Every sign was in Hebrew, and most travelers staying there were speaking Hebrew! It's hard enough trying to learn Spanish, or finding English speakers, let alone try to communicate in Hebrew! They didn't have any vacancies the next night, so we happily moved on and are now staying in a cool little hostel for $6 a night with our own bathroom!



I'll eventually update you on what we're doing in Baños and how our Spanish is going, but right now I want to sleep so hope you're enjoying our posts and keep commenting so we know what's happening over there, like who should be coaching the crows now that craigy's quit!

¡Hasta luego!