Baños 2

When I woke up this morning, I had a big decision to make. Option 1 - Take a 3-hour drive to Chimborazo volcano - the highest mountain in the world if you measure from the center of the earth instead of from sea level (I know, but it makes the Ecuadorians feel good so I’m not going to argue), hike up to the top at an altitude that makes many people sick, then a three-hour drive back. Option 2 – Take a picturesque drive in the mountains and then soak in local hot springs that are created and heated by the Tungurahua volcano (water that I am trying so hard not to refer to as “volcano juice.”) After an agonizing ten seconds that felt more like 15 or 20 seconds, I opted for the latter.

But first, a drive to some viewpoints above Baños, which I am leaving tomorrow. Not much to say about these.

I went on this swing, which is more of an experience than it may seem at first glance. Sure, it’s just a swing. But when you’re at the top and there’s nothing but blue sky above you and a 1,000-foot drop below you, you feel it. 

Then two of my German travelling buddies and I (I call them that despite that fact that I learned last night that Lucas’s father is only one year older than me) had lunch at the mercado central. We strolled around, sizing up the various vendors with various animals in various states of disassembly, and discovered a stand that made fresh cheese and banana empanadas, fried to order and served too hot to eat right away. We got a whole bag of them for $1 (my treat) and had lunch. Lucas also had some kind of fried pork dough ball. We’ll see how he’s doing later tonight.

But I couldn’t hang around too long because I had a date with a large pool of brownish volcano juice. The contents of the water reads like the ingredient list on the back of a Doritos bag - sulfur, silica, sodium and potassium chloride, potassium sulfate, magnesium bicarbonate, calcium and iron. They have three pools at three different temperatures and the recommendation is to gradually build up to the hottest one, which I did.

When I got back to my room I was feeling pretty relaxed. I took a shower to remove whatever horrible things I was surely exposed to in that pool, then lay down for a moment. At which point it started pouring outside so I opened the balcony doors and passed out listening to the rain. Yes, I would be envious too if I were you.