i´ll be in the glapagos islands in 48 hours!!!!!

i´m kind of at a bittersweet point with my trip. i´m SUPER stoked that my galapagos tour is FINALLY here. but that means it´s the last part of my trip and i will be flying back to canada soon. i´m not gonna get all whiney about it but i really can´t say i´m ready to go back yet. sigh. c´est la vie.

so i´ve had a pretty sweet, chilled out four days here in baños. i went on a hike up to this huge statue/monument of the virgin mary and it´s basically just stairs straight up to the statue and some idiot thought it´d be amusing to number the steps so that you are FULLY aware of how many stairs you have climbed. there were 670 steps in total. i think i would have enjoyed that climb more without that knowledge. anyways, the guy who rented me the bike the day before told me that there´s hike from the virgin, up and across the mountain to the other end of town where there´s another lookout point called bellevista (there´s a huge cross up there) and then there´s a path that brings you back down the mountain into town. so i made it up to the virgin and then i started looking for the trail up to the top. no trail. just a wall. so i look around, completely confused for a few minutes. look at the map i was given - which was really only a cartoon version of the town but i think it´s actually the ¨official¨ tourist map of the place - the map doesn´t help. a local man comes up the stairs and he walks past me and goes through a gap in the railing and starts walking BEHIND the wall up the mountain. i have no idea if that´s where i´m suppose to go but i follow. so when i say that this trail takes you UP the mountain, it quite literally just goes UP. i swear there were times when the path was at more than a forty-five degree angle up and i slid back a little with every step. and it seemed to go on FOREVER and it was super sunny and hot that day and it was the day that i decided to underpack so i ran out of water and snacks by the time i got to the top which took about an hour. a solid hour of solid UP. now, having done the lares trek and the inca trail, i figured i was good to hike just about anything but there was no hot, sunny days on the long trekking days - just the days of being a tourist in machu picchu. so i felt like death in the heat of the sun going up this thing. anyways, so an hour later i get to the top and there´s a house up there, a road and no signs pointing me in the direction of where i want to go. so i wander around the top of the mountain for a while. looking at the map. looking at the signs that are there. i match a sign to a landmark on the map but it doesn´t look right as the map shows that the location that the sign is indicating should pretty much be on the other side of the mountain - i was quite sure that i was not on the other side of the mountain. and then a truck comes up the road and it stops, people hop out and everyone looks at me wondering what i´m doing up there. of course, none of them speak english but i manage to find out that i am where the map says i am but the map is not to scale so it really is quite useless. they ask me how i got up there. i said i walked. and they all look at me like i´m crazy. the driver asks if i want a ride back down into town and i decline - i fully intended on hiking back down anyways, just had to figure out where i was. everyone continues to look at me like i´m crazy. oh well. they pointed me in the right direction and off i went. the road went on for a bit and then there are signs. i look down the road that would take me to the hotel/spa at the top of the mountain (people say it´s got a great view and i believe them) and there´s a horse hanging out, chomping away on some grass. it´s not a very wide road, maybe the width of a bus, and the horse is on maybe two-thirds of the road. my plan was to walk slowly and as non-threatening as possible past the horse and to the hotel. seemed like a good plan. until i got to about six feet of the horse. the horse looks up at me as if to ask, ¨what do you think you´re doing?¨ and then starts walking towards me - staring at me. i´m not really an animal person and i know that horses are heavy and could do some serious damage with kicks and tramples and what not. so i decided that i did not have to see the hotel, turned around and walked away slowly. the horse followed me until the rope he was tied to was taut. so i kept going down the road, followed signs to the bellevista viewpoint. i´m walking down a trail in the middle of what seems like forest and there are no signs for a while but there is a local lady picking...something. i pull out my map, tell her i want to go to bellevista, point at the trail and ask, ¨yes?¨ she nods, says something and motions for me to follow her. she starts asking me questions, chatting away, and i tell her that i don´t know spanish. she keeps chatting and asking me questions so i just smile and nod and shrug my shoulders when she looks at me for an answer. so i´m thinking it´s great that someone´s taking me to the viewpoint. however, the language barrier makes itself apparent when she brings me to a paved road, motions for me to cross to the other side and just wait. i´m quite confused. she makes motions of something going by and then i realize that she has brought me to the road so that i could try to hitch a ride back into town. i tell her no, i´ll just walk down the road. i thank her and head off down this road. it´s a very windy road (as in it was very curvy and turny, not blowy) so i walked a lot to not get very far. then i saw a sign pointing to a path that was suppose to lead me back into town. so i head down that and keep going, thinking i´ve completely missed the bellevista lookout but then i walk right into it. i take my pictures and continue on down into baños. all in all, it was a good hike. oh, i may have slightly rolled my right ankle, but it´s not really swollen and doesn´t really hurt, so i think it´s ok...

i went to the hot pools that night, too, and had a fun spanglish conversation with a couple guys from a nearby city who were in town for a few days on business. and i was quite amused by all the parents trying to teach their kids how to swim. the best was probably the little girl with water wings on who essentially just put her head under water and was convinced that she was swimming. totally reminded me of various kids i´ve taught swimming lessons to.

there has been a great group of people i´ve met at this hostel and the five of us have had supper together for the last couple nights. someone goes out and buys stuff from the grocery store and a couple others cook it and i get to eat it. pretty sweet deal. and the food´s been really good.

so nothing too exciting going on. but my galapagos tour officially starts tomorrow!!! yay!!!!! i´m QUITE excited. tomorrow´s just a check-in day for the group so everyone´s just arriving. after i get to quito, i think i´m going to do a day trip out to mitad del mundo - literally ¨the middle of the world,¨ and more commonly known as the equator line. and then we fly out to the galapagos on tuesday morning!!!! and then live on a boat for eight days. i hear that the water´s pretty rough this time of year - i may look into getting some gravol or whatever the ecuadorian equivalent is...

i highly doubt there will be internet access while i´m on the boat, so no more stories from me until the end of the month...and maybe you will actually see me before i post anything...