Mushroom clouds mi culo: Volcanoes don´t scare us!

The rolling green mountains and rushing rivers have earned Baños the name pedazo de cielo, piece of heaven. What better place to recoup from our ayahuasca experience than a somewhere appropriately named ¨baths¨ or ¨bathroom¨, a spot we still visited frequently throughout the week?

An onslaught of internationals litters the city, creating a diverse ambiance that helps a traveller feel at home. With book exchange cafés, murals on corner shop walls and a variety of world foods to pick from, Baños felt like a little Eugene nestled in the mountains. Except the Baños equivalent of Spencer’s Butte, Volcan Tungurahua, shoots four mushroom clouds an hour that cover cars (and contact lenses) with ash. In case you hadn’t heard in the news, since the end of December, Tungurahua has been it’s most active since 2006, when the city of Baños was evacuated. This info didn’t faze us; we spent 5 full days hiking, cycling, waterfall-watching, grubbing on EXCELLENT comida, and bathing in the local hot springs. While mingling with locals in the neighboring town of Rio Verde, we picked up some custom-made jewellery…. And the volunteer opportunity we’d been hoping for.

What fell into our laps was the chance to teach English and Computers in a small school located 15 minutes by bus from Baños. Without such topics currently being taught, the children in Rio Verde are at an extreme disadvantage once they begin High School in Baños. Rather than paying the thousands of dollars volunteers have paid before to teach in Rio Verde through a foundation in Quito, we will be able to stay with a family for the month and receive food and board for a few hundred dollars. Looks like we’ll be extending the trip for at least a month, doing what we’d hoped we would once we made the right connections and found an ideal city to set up shop in….. a place close enough to paradise but out of the reach of lava flows, falling rocks, or anything else the volcano may spew in the next few weeks.

By the time we boarded a bus to Ambato, Baños´ tourist population had dropped significantly. With every rumble from the mouth of the volcano, we were happier to be on our way north. A night in Ambato with an amigo Ecuatoriano whom we met at the Gran Ritual, had us celebrating local-style. He helped us find a classical guitar to purchase, the one missing element of our trip up until now, and we strummed it in the woods with him and his band mates (yes, reggae DOES exist in the sierras of Ecuador), smoked hookah and stopped by a live hip-hop concert. Next month, Jorge is putting on an international music festival, in which his band, Pan de Agua, and many others will jam. We can’t wait.

The following day brought by bus through the clouds to a small town at 3854 m. (about 11,500 ft.) called Quilatoa. The pueblo`s population isn’t listed in Lonely Planet; it was created by an increasing number of tourists coming to the Laguna Quilatoa, Crater Lake’s rival which rests at the town’s edge. A 4 hour hike around the rim brought us to the conclusion that it wasn’t as big as Crater Lake, but equally as beautiful. The emerald green water reflected the steep, heavily vegetated slopes leading up to jagged peaks, which we struggled to climb at such an altitude. After a chilly night’s sleep, we returned to Quito to feast on sushi (that’s right, SALMON in Ecuador!!!) and rest up before heading to Mindo, a tiny, saturated town in the rainy cloud forest 2 ½ hours north of the capital. A high-altitude jungle, the cloud cover holds in heat and creates a tropical environment which keeps you moistly comfortable. It has rained non-stop since we got here, providing us hours of mud-stomping…errr…hiking through beautiful forests. It also hums us to sleep at night, along with the never-ending drown of birds and insects. We continue to rest our soggy bones here before heading back to Quito to stay in a house with some friends we met in Quilatoa, followed by two weeks returning to the Amazon to volunteer at Yachana with the FUNEDESIN Foundation.

The photos say it better than we can:

http://picasaweb.google.com/clapoma/BaOsLagunaQuilatoaAndMindo