Baywatch it ain´t
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2006
1
37
90
Trip End
Dec 25, 2007
Baños,
Ecuador
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Our home for the next few days was Plantos y Blancos, a place that came with high recommendations for itīs huge breakfasts (check) and its steam bath treatment (story to come). And so it was after a mountain of fruit and pancakes that we headed out to the hot baths of Baņos. Just Tiffany, me and a couple of hundred locals crowded into four pools of varying temperature, colour, smell and activity. The locals consisted of the population of the Baņos retirement home, the screaming kids from the local school and a few strays in between. The local bathing attire contained a hell of a lot of material which suprisingly failed to hold in items such as 80 year old breasts which continually appeared throughout the course of the morning, be it left or right, luckily never both. Trapped in my own National Geographic pictorial with no way out! Sure it was not what the fans wanted but they were having fun and had earnt their soak in the sulphur coloured waters of Baņos. Meanwhile we soaked in hot water, dove into freezing water and all the time wondered what really did make water such a nice milky colour, how did Tiffanyīs cossie react and turn a totally different colour....and make us so damn lethargic for the rest of the day?
That night we were entertained by the establishment across the road playing the same three Bob Marley songs over and over and over again for about 3 hours, or until my sedative kicked in, I canīt remember which came first! Sure I had already developed a deep dislike for Bob thanks to every dread-locked hippy backpacker haunt playing him to death and this along with the locals loud singing was just adding insult to injury. The burning questions now are what is the attraction with non-stop Bob, and also why do certain nationalities always, without fail, eat with their mouths open. Someone pass me the blackboard so I can scrape my nails ever so s-l-o-w-l-y down its entire surface!
The next morning it was our turn for the steam room treatment at Plantos y Blancos. They like to refer to it as a "health bath". It went something like this. You entered your own wooden individual seated steam chamber, dodged the eucalyptus branches on the floor, adjusted your steam to desired heat level and waited for your lid to be put in place. Once the lid had been slid up all that remained exposed outside your box was your head. So there we were, four exposed heads, looking like we were on the set of a David Copperfield Magic Special. And so began the treatment, steam followed by a ritual with a bloody cold towel being slid up and over the surface of your body before you were banished back to the box for more of the same. The only addition to this was halfway through when you were escorted to a small bath with cold water and proceeded to have your bowels massaged. The bizarre nature of this treatment was just turned up a couple of notches. We finished the treatment being blasted with cold water from a high pressure hose, front and back before heading back to our room wondering what the hell we had just experienced, as my skin broke out into a mass of red blotches, to accompany the saddle sores on my ass! Noice, unusual, different....sure!
The saving grace for Baņos was itīs food from great coffee, curry, shrimp and avocado, trout and steak with mushrooms...but fear not there were the usual helpings of broth soup followed by yet more chicken and rice.
