Busing around: Week 4

After a week of rain, we headed south to Banos and as fate would have it, found a cheap hotel just outside a motorbike hire place - talk about unfair, but it was only $10 a night including a kitchen (home cooked food is a break from brosterries (friend chicken, the south american staple), so no complaints. We couldn't (read Al couldn't) do much of the stuff that was on offer, but we saw the town and took a truck tour of the waterfalls.

Next we headed for one of the famous trains rides down the Devils nose. It no longer goes from Rio Bamba, so we went another couple of hours south past Volcan Chimborazo (the highest point from the center of the earth) to Alausi - a pooooosh hotel for $25 (including queen size bed and great hot water at high pressure) and dinner for $3.50 for both. We got the early ride down the nose at 8am for $20USD and got on another bus at 11:30 for Cuenca. For backpackers on a budget, the bus ride down is almost as good as the train ride. Try to get a seat on the right hand side for both. On the train, we ran into Mike whom we met in Pasto, Colombia (where we were told off for gassing rather loudly past 2am). Mike's a great dancer...and had fun with the maypole.

Cuenca lacked the cultural pleasantness of Quito (the old town feel was just not the same), but it had it's fair share of nice buildings, and some really good food. We did a walking tour of the city, taking in some markets and museums along the way. We also took in some of the markets in the surrounding towns the next day, but they were real markets; veges and meats. But the quality was great, better than Quito. Day 3 was a lazy one... chris jacked up a couple of hours spanish tuition to get some help with her books, and to root out some of those consistently bad errors that are creeping in. We also ran into Mike again, and can report that Caiprihana's made with south american white rum are better than those you get other places....yummy. The staff at Cafecito are also sweet with their coffee refils!

We'll be busing our way back to Quito in the next day or so and will look at doing the repair work on Als' bike so that we can get the F*** out of Ecuador as soon as Al is able to ride again. Only a week or two to go... [someone is getting a little frustrated with Ecuador]

Al is starting to work on getting his should back into shape, but he is being very gentle with the exercises, mainly passive ones to get mobility back. He is limited in raising his arm to about 1 ft / 30 cm from his waist before pain sets in, so a long way to go there. His graze is down to about 1 sq cm, almost just a plaster now, and the bruising is almost gone too, almost...