Saturday 10 August 2013

Volcanic Views

Day 72 - 9 de Agosto: Baños to Cotopaxi National Park

Today was quite an early morning, considering the late night we had last night. Regardless, I woke up and made my way to breakfast. We had eggs and bread again, and although many people were starting to complain about the lack of variety, i was perfectly content with eating it. We had this early morning because it was going to be packed before we would leave at noon. We filed into the bus and the first attraction of Baños that we were taken to was an enormous waterfall. You couldn't see it from the town, so we had to walk down the cliffside for a bit, then back up when the waterfall started. They had a cool walking trail that allowed you to get closer and higher up the waterfall until we were actually able to stand underneath the torrent! The path were caves, literally carved into the rock alongside the waterfall. They were small openings, so i had to crouch really low to get through. After taking our pictures, we walked over a suspension bridge that had us overlooking the whole rushing river below. After a little while here, we went back to the bus and were taken a few minutes down the road to a cable car that gave us a ride over and back a massive canyon! I thought it would be like a roller coaster and was a bit nervous, but it turned out to be such a fun ride. When we finally returned to the hotel, we had a small amount of time to pack up, collect our laundry and get on the bus. I'm still not incredibly impressed by these hotels that run entirely on cash and have next to no change on them. It took them ten minutes to find me $3.75 of change. But this wasn't the slowest delay - half the people didn't have their laundry delivered until 20 minutes after we were suppose to leave. Apparently the laundromat had a power outage last night and they were delayed. But at least we could hit the road now - we had a tight deadline to make since we were staying in a national park tonight that closed its gates at 3pm. We made it with 5 minutes to spare. We climbed and climbed in elevation until we made it to this nearly barren plateau with nothing but a little lodge at the end of the dirt road. But we weren't looking at that - what caught our attention was the massive Cotopaxi volcano in view! We checked in and went for a quick walk to take pictures. However, the rest of the evening was spent in complete relaxation. We had a great (but kind of expensive) dinner, then hung out as a group playing mafia again. We also checked out the stars which were spectacular in this remote area. The night finished off watching movies on one of the guy's laptops. I love this natural place and i'm really glad that the elevation (approx 3750m) isn't affecting me.

The waterfall
The caves to get there
Beautiful canyon
Cotopaxi park

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