Baños a Cuenca

Leaving Baños is a lot harder than I expected it would be. It´s not difficult to hop on a bus for somewhere else, but it is hard to leave people who ROCK. I wasn´t a part of the group exactly but was becoming a face in a certain crowd of people all of whom I´ve grown to adore. And when I told them I might never leave, their faces lit up and they cheered. It´s not so much that it´s me, but that it´s a shared experience, as though they too had found Baños or Baños them and had never left. I don´t know what I´d do in Baños, how I would earn a living or how I´d adjust to living in a small town that thrives off of tourism. I think I would be the first American extrañera there though...

On the buses, vendors hop on & off selling piña, secos de pollo, helados, porta tarjetas and sometimes even their own agenda. This morning there was a guy putting candy in everyone´s hands, talking about his family and their suffering. Why is someone who is suffering giving away candy on a bus? After the speech about his family and the plea for help, he came back around to collect the dough you owe him for taking the candy. Ah! There´s the rub!

Our second security checkpoint--Thursday must be a good day for busting people without proper registration.

There is a train that passes from Riobamba to Alausi but never seems to be functioning. This particular stretch is the only remaining track in use in all of Ecuador. With such steep mountains all the way down to sea level, trains derail frequently, landslides long since having left other lines in ruins. On the bus south to Cuenca today, we followed alongside the train tracks. There were sheep, farmers, cows, children, goats, dogs, farms, but no trains. They say you have to have luck to be able to catch the train. And as it is, you ride on the top of the cars in the sun...or rain. Several extrañeros hopped on the bus last minute before leaving the terminal in Riobamba, so I´m guessing the train wasn´t running. I didn´t feel too great riding a bus through curvy terrain at such high altitudes with people who have bad luck! But I made it and am staying at El Cafecito a hotel with a happenin´ restuarant and bar. A´ight!