hot shower

Last saturday I enjoyed my first hot shower in almost 4 months. That sounds like a long time, but the truth is that I haven´t missed it, and most days actually look forward to getting home to a nice cold shower. The reason for this luxury was that I went to visit a friend in a city in the mountains, and the climate there makes it a necessity.

The Sierra of Ecuador is a completely different world than the coast, they even speak differently and once again I had to adjust my ears to a new accent. Since I have spent so little time in the Sierra I shouldn´t really judge between the two ´worlds´, but I do it anyways since the two cities I have been in are much cleaner, quieter, and better organized than Guayaquil. I should mention that Guayaquil is the by far the biggest city in the country and I am not exactly living in the best part of it, so there will obviously be more noise/pollution/etc.. than a smaller city deals with. Furthermore my friend is from the upper-middle class and therefore lives a very different life than most people I know here in Guayaquil do. Even taking these differences into account however, I still think that what I have seen of the Sierra is generally more developed than what I have seen of the coast.



One good un-biased example of this is the fact that the city I was in, Ambato, had public trash dumpsters every other block. I have yet to see a garbage can here in Guayaquil outside the touristy area along the river, so you can imagine where all the garbage usually winds up. The garbage trucks have designated pickup points along their route (no trash can in the alley), so a day or two before the pick up date you can see a large pile of garbage seeminlgy piled at random alongside the road, and even if you don´t see it you will be sure to smell it. Once again take into account that I am living in a rather poor part of the city and only 30 years ago their was nothing here but trees. Despite its overall ugliness everyone assures me that it used to be a lot worse, and continues to improve.



Anyways back to the Sierra. The city of Ambato is not anything too special, I found Loja to be nicer, yet it is close to a lot of cool places, and fortunately my friend has a car so I got to see some of the surrounding area. The most distinguishing feature of Ambato is the massive volcano you can see smoking from anywhere in the city, and the base of it is a very touristy town called Baños (due to its´ volcanically heated thermal baths). Despite all the typical tourist trap stuff it is a very nice town with a lot of stuff to do, from bungee jumping to white water rafting to a world famous downhill mountain bike course. The area consists of very steep mountains with a ton of cool waterfalls and canyons to hike in. Since we were only there for a few hours I didn´t see very much but we did hike into a canyon with an incredible waterfall, and if you are willing to scramble through some pretty tight wet spaces you can even get right behind it, getting soaked in the process. I hope to go back and see a bit more next week.



Next week is carnaval and the monday tuesday and wednesday are holidays, so i plan on taking the whole week of so I can see some of the many places I haven´t had a chance to visit yet. I am going to start by going back to Ambato since the parties for Carnaval are supposed to be especially good there, plus they have a very famous parade and festival of flowers and fruits that everyone tells me I have to see. Other possible attractions include: Quito, the capital, Cotopaxi the national park with several volcanos to hike up, and possibly even a part of the amazon. Should be a good week.