Thursday, January 14, 2010

Smoking Volcano


Smoking Volcano, originally uploaded by burro come churro.

We are on the road to Baños which is near to Quito nestled deep in the shadow of a valley of a gigantic smoking volano. See photo for proof I was there. This is the volcan Tungruahua which was spouting vigorously enough to scare everyone off the mountain a few years back, but slowly people have trickled back as it hasn´t erupted yet. Now it´s a tourist attraction despite the fact it hasn´t been settled weather or not it might blow someday soon. Besides the beauty and awesomeness of a smoking volcano, Baños is really amazingly beautiful and has hot springs to boot. We stayed at a very comfy hostel and ate giant breakfasts and admired the small towns quaint streets. There is a challanging set of stairs that climb the steep jungly slopes up the side of the mountain to a statue of GOD that overlooks the whole place. We went up there, saw him but had to run down to catch a bus but we wished we´d had a few more days to go on a longer hike further up the ridge onto a plateau where there is a little hamlet with farms and cows and other stuff like that. Next time tunguahua unless you haven´t destroyed everything by then - hope not.