Spent the last two days in Banos. This place is great, but I can´t stay here much longer or I will spend all my money. My first night here I was going to take it easy, but couldn´t sleep and went out to get a beer. Ended up meeting up with a bunch of other travelers, and after playing some pool, started dancing and drinking heavily. Danced Salsa with an Ecuadorian salsa teacher we met, the best salsa dancer i´ve ever seen, and after we made fools of ourselves he gave us all impromptu drunken lessons, followed by hours of intense hiphop dancing and amateur breakdancing (everyone tried, including me, we all looked like fools, it was great). Tied the night up with some MJ and Elvis Presley. Good time. Ended up having lunch with the salsa dancer the next day, nice guy.
Day 2, I rent a motorcycle for four hours and drive to Pailon Del Diablo, a famous waterfall. The ride was amazing. On the walk down I passed a group of 4 hippies traveling all over south america with nothing but a small backpack and two guitars. They were from Uraguay, Spain, Argentina, and Brazil. These were some of the coolest people I¨ve ever met. It was one of their birthdays, so they were drinking a bottle of wine, which they shared with me, and then we went down to the waterfall together. They didn´t have any money, and didn´t realize there was a 1 dollar entrance fee, so I treated them as a birthday gift, and we climbed up to this huge waterfall, crawled along a rediculously short stone cave to stand underneath it on the cliff face, and then had lunch together by the waterfall, sandwitches they made on the spot from cheese, carrots, garlic, tomatoes, and bread. really delicious. We walked across a bridge looking for a place to relax and play guitar, and we met these people who had a house ten minutes through the jungle by the waterfall. These two israely guys invited us to join them, and we went and drank lemonade and played guitar in this beautiful little cabin. It was incredible.
TOday I split a full day motorcycle rental with an American fellow I met named David, and we rode all the way to Puyo, about 65 kilometers which drops more then 500meters through the mountains and through several long tunnels. Unbelievable ride, lot of long curves and straightaways and all along a river. In Puyo theres not much to do, but we went to a monkey reserve where they adopt illegal monkeys and reintroduce them to the wild. The monkeys climbed all over u and played with us, at one point I had five monkeys on me! This was tons of fun.
After lunch of roast chicken in Puyo, we rode back to Baños, and got 80 minute massages for 25$. Hot stones, oils, lotion, a facial with cucmbers and everything, and all kinds of wierd stuff. Awesome nonetheless, but not mindblowing. It was more swedish massage and I would have preferred deep tissue massage. The cucumbers were hilarious though.
Tomorrow I´m heading to Macas, hopefully for a peace corps thanksgiving, if not I´ll ust explore the rainforest, and then buy a raw turkey and cry myself to sleep cuddling it. Thats all for now.
I don't think I've ever been so jealous of you. Except maybe when you slaughtered that pig that mysteriously weighed exactly the same as me. Coincidence? I think not. The moral: Leah needs a monkey.
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