11/7/04
We´ve been having a good experience thus far at the Black Sheep Inn. It´s been nice to be settled in one place, and to get to know people. We´ve been in the unique position of meeting tons of people from all over the world. The guests are great and always have tips about places we are going to visit, or something to teach us about their own cultures. We´ve adopted one of the dogs at the inn, his name is Terrible, and he loves to come hiking with us!
Jim and I are taking a well deserved and needed break from the place that we are ´volunteering´ we headed down to a town called Baños (baths), where there are hot springs, however, they turned out to be dissappointing and not so sanitary looking...so we didn´t indulge. We stayed at the Princessa Maria in Baños, it´s an adorable little hostal for only $4 per night and ít´s not in any guidebooks. (Rocafuerte y Mera phone 03 274 1035) We were lucky enough to meet up with our friend Erica. We met her at the BSI (black sheep inn), she lives in Washington and is thinking about going back to school for Oriental Medicine...what a small world!
We´ve both been having digestive issues, mine have been recurrent over the last 5 weeks...and for the last 2 weeks have been really bad. So, we went to a parasitologist and got our poops tested...the results were very interesting. I´ve got amoebas and a bad bacterial infection which they think is selmonella...and Jim´s got amoebas and giardia...yuck!!! I´ve got to get some herbs to deal with these issues...because the meds are terrible, I´m sure.
So, regardless of the fact that our bodies are fighiting a foreign war, we were determined to enjoy our few days off. So we rented bikes and biked about 25k west of baños down toward the jungle, it was beautiful to see the landscape change. It became so lush and full of waterfalls. We even took a little cable car accross the canyon and we went directly over the waterfall, it was a beautiful perspective although, a bit precarious. After that we hopped on a bus for 2 hours that took us south west to Riobamba. Riobamba is located south east of Chimborazo, a volcano that reaches over 6100 meters (over 23000 feet) (another thing we´re refining here is our use of the metric system :-)) Here we´re staying at the Hotel Tren Dorado. It´s really close to the train station, where the train leaves 3 days per week to head south for a supposedly thrilling ride through and around mountains called the nariz del diablo. Unfortunatly the train did not go this morning as there had been a landslide and part of the track was not passable. So instead we hired a taxi to take us up to the refugio on Chimborazo. We drove through beautiful green landscape and climbed high into the mountains, as we climbed, the vegitation quickly changed into a barren desert-like landscape, almost lunar. There was some snow, but not much for this time of year. When we arrived at the refugio at 5000m we got out and began to hike up to the second refugio. Slowly, very slowly...just walking and talking took our breath away. I stopped short of the building, but Jim made it all the way up. It was beautiful, and the clouds lifted just long enough for us to get a glimpse of the mountain.
Tomorrow we head back to the BSI for about 3 more weeks of volunteering. The owners are heading back to the states for 2 weeks for a well deserved break, so it´ll be us and Ian, a former manager running the place over Thanksgiving. He and I are both vegetarians so looks like Jim´s in charge of basting the turkey!!
Right now we´re doing tons of research and trying to make some decisions about our last month in South America. After we leave the BSI we´ll have a month to see the rest of the continent....it is already very clear that we´ll have to return!!
Sending peace and love, Lisa

The ride over the falls