Hosteria Ecologica El Faro Salinas

... with deer horns and spit run in your face, not sure how that works, but everyone else was doing it!<br>Such a cool little festival, the whole community seemed to be involved, and I think the locals loved seeing the odd gringo watching, dancing and enjoying themselves.<br>Anyway, I decided to head off later in the afternoon and arrived in Banos about 6ish. I ran into this mental Irish guy I had been seeing in Colombia. He is travelling until carnival, so we exchanged details and will no ...

... burner was definitely going in their bit) and dinner wouldn't be long. I'm always fascinated by how people live their lives, particularly those people who are catering for foreign tourists like us. There were 2 large living areas that seemed to double up as dining room, sales area for paintings, masks, woollen things and jewellery. There wasn't anything luxurious about this accommodation or furnishings at all, in fact, the room with the log burner had 2 ...

... from all over the world<br><br>7. Super speed and agility at dodging cars on streets where pedestrians are considered dispensable<br><br>8. Built-in lung filters (I opened the windows one day, thinking I needed some fresh air; all I breathed in were car exhaust fumes)<br><br>9. A sixth sense for bad characters on the street and other places, because of the high quantity of ladrones in Quito<br><br>Okay, I'm obviously not a super hero, but I think I have learned something very important ...

... of mist here and there, alongside rays of sunshine too. My head is hurting a bit, I'm guessing do to the altitude? Let me check how high it is here... 2,756 meters, it seems. Not *that* bad, right? Hmm... all the same, my head does hurt a bit... I'm sure it'll pass. Maybe tomorrow I'll check out the Chimborazo volcano or something... Depends how I'm feeling I suppose. So anyways, I finally met up with Juan Pablo, my CS host here in Riobamba, after about 40 ...

... up and hiked to the upper (Whymper) refuge at 5000m while it puked snow. I wasn't sure how long this would last and wondered how it might affect our climb. I felt o.k. walking and told Wilson that I thought I would be fine. We arrived to a camera crew at the upper refuge but surprisingly (not!) they were not for us. Santiago Quintero, an Ecuadorian climber and world renowned mountaineer was there. This was a man who had soloed big ...

... to me it seemed out of place. Volleyball. They play it everywhere and there are volley ball courts everywhere. And by courts I mean, two poles of any kind with whatever kind of netting you can find to string between the them. So far it seems that all of the plazas have some sort of provision for volley ball playing. Its hilarious. They play in their jeans and with soccer balls (what ...

... right toward us. What did they want? Could they be pirates? We had no guns on board or any other means of stopping them from boarding. But is it realistic to think you can stop an armed group of men from boarding? Fighting would probably just make things worse. We decided to act friendly toward them. Bill spoke his best Spanish with them, and after learning they were Ecuadorian fishermen who were going to sleep in their open fiberglass skiff for three ...

... any family to spend the holidays with. It should be lots of fun! Another tradition here is to party after Christmas dinner and one of our friends is having a house party with music, dancing and drinks tonight! I think a friend who is the owner of a bar is throwing us a going away party tomorrow night, so we´re in for lots of celebration! I hope you´re all doing well and having a relaxing day off, hopefully! Take care and felices fiestas ...

... the Andes winding our way through the mountains along the sheer cliffs and endless ravines. The ride gave us the best views of two of Ecuador´s volcanos, Carihuairazo and Chimborazo (both now extinct) and the ride itself takes you to elevations beyond 15,000 feet. We instructed our bus driver that we would like to be dropped off at Salinas. Our bus didn´t actually go through Salinas, so we were dropped at a fork in the road. Rather than wait for a bus ...

... pacific fish guidebook, the favourites were : swordfish, blue sharks &amp; hammerhead sharks. I'm sticking to hammerhead sharks, cos that makes the story better... We got to Salinas in Ecuador, which has been billed (a bit optimistically) as the 'Miami of Ecuador'....um, ok, not sure about that. Granted, there are some big hotels and a beach, but you have to negotiate the open manholes, sandy sidewalks &amp; juice stalls to get there.