Horse With No Rider

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  Baños, Ecuador
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Day 4: (written by Ruth)  We got up early...again.  Somehow we seem to be waking up earlier than we did when we weren't on vacation.  But at least we're doing fun things.  We had a really nice (free) breakfast at the hotel and then went to meet someone to take us to the horse-back riding place.  We made small talk in Spanish as we were walking.  It was a beautiful day.  We got to the horses.  I had a pretty painted horse and Mike had a brown horse.  Jaime was our guide - he did not speak English but he was very receptive to my basic Spanish.  So, we started off through town to the mountains.  We quickly realized that my horse and Mike's horse had some issues with each other.  Each one wanted to be in front.  My horse usually won out (Mike says because he let mine win...uh huh).  We went up the mountain to an area where Jaime told us we'd get off and hike to a waterfall.  Wow, very well worth it.  When it got to an area that we could let our horses run, Mike's horse's personality shone through.  As my horse passed his, his horse bit at mine and mine sped up.  Not the most fun way to spend on a horse.  So, after that, we made sure to keep our horses apart from each other.  Plus, Mike didn't really enjoy when his horse was running anyway.  So, I'd run up ahead and then Jaime and Mike would catch up.  After a couple hours we got to the same lookout point that we had been to the night before with the chivas.  We were glad to see it during the day.  Beautiful view.  As we're looking at the view, a little girl came up to us, held my hand, and was very interested in Mike's camera.  She started to look through his pockets (basically frisking him).  We're thinking maybe she wanted to take a picture of us...she was cute.  Later she was playing with bugs as if they were toys...of course I was scared of them...but it was all very cute.

Now we were heading down the mountain.  It was steep, but beautiful scenery.  At one point, we looked back, and there was the guide's horse, but he wasn't on it.  We waited for a few minutes, and still no Jaime.  Our horses weren't too interested in turning around, so Mike got off his horse and went looking for the guide. He found him...apparently an old woman wanted some help with something so he stopped to help her.  A bit odd...but ok.  Continued on down the mountain with both our horses competing for the front.  We finished the ride - we were on the horses for about 4 horses.  It was so much fun.  But so sore!  We had some lunch and then relaxed at the hotel til we could finally go to the baths at 6pm.  We chickened out that morning.  It was too cold.   The baths were very confusing - we couldn't find where to rent towels (apparently because they ran out), there were no signs as to what was what - but we eventually figured stuff out enough to get into a warm bath that didn't burn us.  There were too many people though and people didn't seem to understand how to maintain personal space.  But, the surroundings were beautiful, with the mountains and the waterfall surrounding us.  Our hotel was very convenient to the baths so we didn't freeze as we walked back.  Dinner as usual was excellent - good Italian food, good wine.  After dinner we went to a cool bar that had what I call walk up seating (think swim up bar).  We had a few drinks there and were entertained by the stray dogs.  If we haven't already mentioned, there were a ton of stray dogs in Baņos.  They just wander around in groups of 2 or more, looking for food and checking the other dogs out.  What was so entertaining about these 2 dogs we were watching was that 1 was a Doberman and he seemed watching out and guarding the area for this little dog.  The Doberman would stand guard while the little dog relaxed and if the little dog moved, he moved.  It was very funny...whether it was the drinks or not, I do not know.  And as a side note...the same day that Barbara sent out pictures from the night in La Grange, so kindly keeping back some of the photos, we saw a bar called Barbass!  Yes, a picture will follow...

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