Ecuador: Quito to Guayaquil

I have to correct my earlier post.  I was not at Santurario de Las Lajas for Easter Sunday, but for Palm Sunday (the beginning of Holy Week in Latin America).

I arrived in Quito, Ecuador, at the crack of dawn on an overnight bus and immediately jumped aboard another bus bound for Latacunga, a city near the middle of the country in the Andes Mountains.  It was to be a good jumping off point for visiting some of the sites in the area.  Latacunga is a surprisingly large city.  I don't know what I expected, but it certainly wasn't that.  There are many churches in the city (like most Latin American towns), which light up at night and make for some really beautiful nighttime sightseeing.  The city locks up at night and finding restaurants, bars, cafes and the like after 9 p.m. proved to be a rather difficult task.

While in Latacunga, my friend and I wanted to see Quilotoa, a crater lake that is renowned for it's emerald green waters.  Quilotoa didn't disappoint.  It is the second most beautiful crater lake I've ever visited (second, of course, to my home state's Crater Lake).

There are some quaint small villages surrounding the laguna and the Ecuadorian people are dressed in their traditional garb, giving the villages a very "real" feel.  We stopped so my friend could try a local dish: chicken feet.  Ewww!

Also, my friend wanted to go hiking on Cotopaxi (the second highest peak in Ecuador, I believe), but because of my bum knees I couldn't make the trek.  I was hoping to catch a ride up the mountain and bike down.  Unfortunately, I was the only person who wanted to go that day, so the fee would've been $90.  I passed on it and relaxed.

After Latacunga, my friend and I ventured to Baños, another city in the Andes.  We were in the middle of Holy Week.  Holy Week is a major tourist period for travelers and locals alike, and finding accommodations and buses can be difficult.  Fortunately, we didn't have any problems with buses, but accommodations were a different story.  We thought we'd made reservations at the hostel in which we wanted to stay (we arrived the Thursday before Easter Sunday, at the height of Holy Week travelers), but discovered upon arrival that our reservations didn't go through.  We had to scramble a little to find accommodations, but we managed to find a place (well, one place for one night, another place for another night, then back to the original place for two nights...whew!).

Baños, so named because of its many thermal baths, wasn't a place I was sure would be worth the trip.  Before going there, I honestly thought, "what's so special about the thermal baths?  Is that all there is to do there?"  Boy was I wrong!  I adore Baños!  The town has lots of character.  Sure, maybe it was because we were there for the tail end of Holy Week, but there were lots people and excitement buzzing around the town.  The market in the town square had more color than I'd seen in one location in quite a while. The church in the middle of the city is really worth the visit: I've never seen an altar so golden!  It is intricate and delicate and beautiful.

Banos from a hilltop:

One of the days in Baños a group of us went on a long walk to one of the thermal baths.  The baths are strange.  People have built cement walls around the areas where the water comes out of the ground to create pools of varying temperatures.  The water ranges from sort of murky to downright opaque, with the more opaque pools emitting a strange odor similar to sulfur or dirt or God only knows what.  None of us felt exactly clean after our "baths," but it was worth the experience.  Afterwards, we took a cab ride up one of the surrounding mountains to get a better view of Vulcan Tungurahua and to try our luck at "The Swing at the End of the World."  The swing is on a precipice similar to a canyon but with a gentler slope; you swing out over the canyon (for lack of a better word) into a sort of abyss.  I wasn't sure that I would actually have the nerve to do it (I'm afraid of heights a bit), but I'm glad I did!  It was exhilarating and we all had a blast.

On another occasion, my friend and I took a bus tour of the Avenue of Waterfalls.  OK, remember what I said in a previous post about waterfalls being awesome no matter how many you've seen?  Well, these were no exception.  Because of the high mountains, the waterfalls around Baños are some of the most stunning.  Perhaps the sheer number of waterfalls in the area is what's so impressive, or maybe it's the size of the waterfalls, but either way these waterfalls literally had my jaw dropping at various points throughout the tour.

From Baños, my friend and I made our way to Guayaquil.  Guayaquil was more of a stopover than anything, because our flight to Galápagos Islands would depart from there.  Nonetheless, we gave ourselves a couple days to explore the city and I can't say I'm disappointed.  We came upon a park known for the many iguanas just roaming around.  It's strange to me that the first thing you hear about the park is about the iguanas, and not about the huge church directly facing the park.  Anyway, the rumors of the iguanas were true.  They were everywhere...and hanging out with the local pigeons as well.  So weird.

My favorite part about Guayaquil were a couple of twin hills with buildings painted in every color of the rainbow, giving the appearance that the hills themselves were painted.  My friend and I climbed 444 steps (no, I didn't count each step, they are numbered) to the top of one of the hills, affording us a panoramic view of the city at sunset.  It was worth every step and my knees now seemed to be doing considerably better.

After Guayaquil, we boarded a plane bound for the Galápagos Islands.....