A City Called Bathroom and 5 year old Hostal Owners

So when we left off last we weren´t sure how we were going to be continuing our trip...via plane or bus. We decided that we had to go by bus since the cheapest flight from Ecuador to Peru was like 1,000 bucks or something stupìd like that. So the next morning in Otavalo we woke up (to the sound of fireworks...which they apparrently set off every Sunday starting at 7am), and took a 2 hour bus south back to Quito. We then hopped into a taxi and rode to the south end of Qutio which took about 40 minutes or so but was much more fun because we rode with two people from Spain and chatted with them most of the time (thank god laura habla espanol). Then hopped on a 4 hour bus ride south to Banos...which I understand to be the spanish word for bathrooms...but it probably means ´baths´to them because there are some natural hotsprings around the town.

So we got off the bus in Banos, which is a very small and touristy town, and walked around to try to find a hostal. The first place we went to, there was nobody around, but a little girl of about 3 years of age was walking up the stairs to the reception desk at the same time that we were. Nobody was at the reception desk but the little girls turns to us and in this tiny voice, politely asks us in Spanish if we have a reservation. We laugh, and tell her that no we don´t. Then she asks us how many of us there will be. We tell her dos personas. We were about to ask her if she ran the hostal. Then she said ´hold on, let me go get my mommy.´ And walked to a nearby door and tried to get in. When it wouldn´t open she started crying loudly...after about 5 minutes the door quickly opened and someone let the little girl in and then slammed the door in our faces. I wonder what the mom was doing in there...hmmm

Anyway, this was all to weird and so we left and found a nice little place with a great mattress- which is VERY hard to find. Then we were going to go try out the hotsprings but the line to get in was about 500 people long...and when we realized that all these people we going to be heading into two tiny little pools of hot water, we decided to skip that. The night probably would have been a total bust but we walked passed a volleyball court.

I should explain that Ecuador is obsessed with volleyball...but it is totally different from the game that we know in the US. First of all, the net is like 5 feet HIGHER than the net in America. Which makes NO sense because the average Ecuadorian is about 5 feet shorter thant the average american. So when I first started watching I thought, ´these guys suck.´ But, I didnt realize that the ball is actually a soccer ball and about 3 times heavier than the ball we use. After watching for a while, Laura convinced me to put some shoes and and to head back to the courts (there were three of them lit up by lights) and try to get into a game.

Turns out that the games are played for money. I figured that it would be for a few bucks per game, but when we asked around, it turned about that they play for TWO HUNDRED dollars PER GAME. No wonder they were yelling at each other like crazy whenever somebody missed a pass or a set. Not wanted to lose money, I finally asked a couple of kids if I could play with them and ended up playing Ecuadorian volleyball for about an hour...let me tell you that it was a humbling experience. My arms still hurt because the freaking ball they use is like a rock and everytime I tried to spike it I just hit it into the net, and the kids would laugh at me and I would say ¨soy idiota¨...and so on for about an hour. Thanks to Laura pushing me, I got to have this totally unique experience and it totally made the night. Hopefully we can figure out how to upload pictures onto the blog so you can see how high the net is, etc.

Anyway, the next day we were going to go for a bike ride that was supposed to take all day and be great, but it was raining so instead we had to change our plans and hopped on an 8 hour bus ride to Cuenca which is where we are now. The next post will pick up from there!