major

Hangin in Quito, eatin wings, watchin hockey

Baños was good. The hostel was amazing, the people were great, and there´s tons to do there. I went biking the other day - east of Baños, the road drops down into the upper Amazon, and you can rent bikes and ride down the highway. It´s almost all downhill, so just point it and go, blowing by waterfalls, through tunnels, all the while dropping in elevation and watching the forest turn slowly into a tropical jungle. I also hit some of the baths in town, where an Irish girl told me that in Ireland they refer to hottubs as "Canadian hottubs" - apparently hottubs in every hotel is a Canadian thing. I also went out to watch the volcano, but unfortunately it was cloudy - apparently when it´s clear you can see red-hot rocks flying from the caldera. You can definitely hear the volcano constantly rumbling, like thunder in the distance.

From Baños I was off to Tena, the so-called whitewater capital of Ecuador. Unfortunately, however, it would seem that I was the only willing rafter in town, so there weren´t enough people for the trip. Instead of lingering, I caught a bus driven by a psychopath headed for Quito.

An hour out of Tena, we hit some construction on the road and were delayed for over an hour. When we finally started moving again, the driver apparently wanted to make up some serious time. The road we were on was a narrow gravel and dirt path, winding through the rainforest and climbing the foothills of the Andes. The driver was just WORKING the bus, it was nuts! The engine sounded like a rally car, the way he was working the gears through the corners.

So in Quito last night I decided that I needed to watch the hockey game, and I found this bar called Kings Cross that´s owned by a Canadian ex-pat. The inside of the place was covered in hockey pictures, Blue Jays banners and Ontario license plates, and they had a BBQ out front cooking up burgers and chicken wings. Best of all I managed to catch the game.