Baños

My plan was to stay in Baños for a couple days, and then head south. Well I got here on Sunday and now it´s Friday and I´m still here. I actually didn´t like this town at first, but now I feel like I could live here. I´m not sure what it is about it. It´s a small town that covers a valley at the base of Volcán Tungurahua. The volcano is definately active. I´ve felt three earthquakes since I´ve been here and there´s constantly a cloud of ash rising from the crater at the summit. Unfortunately it´s almost always cloudy and I haven´t had a really good view of the volcano yet. There´s a lot to do here. I´ve been hiking and horseback riding on some of the trails around here. The other day I rented a bike and road 60 kilometers from Baños (about 2000m) to Puyo (900m) and watched the ecology change from mountain forest to flat Amazonian rainforest. They call it the `route of the waterfalls´ because there´s about a dozen along the road. I´ve met a lot of great people here, locals and other travelers, and I´m staying at a really fun hostal. My plan now is to stay for the weekend, then head north to Mindo on Sunday. Then I fly home on Thursday. So I´ll see some of you pretty soon. Hasta luego.