Chapter 4: In the Valley of the Giants

  The next day began with me and Ross waking up late for breakfast.  We hurriedly got dressed and got to the dining room as quickly as possible.  By this point the group was used to Ross and I being a bit tardy for meals and such so they weren't too worried, but they did say that had we slept any longer we would have missed breakfast completely. That would have been a bummer. Our meal consisted of four slices of warm bread per person on a little tray with jam, scrambled eggs and a slice of ham.  The waitress also came around to ask if we wanted tea, coffee or a variety of juices. I thought one of the juices she said was pronounced "wana-wana", in reality the juice in question is called "guayabana": for reference it rhymes with menomena. The rest of the table gave me a very strange look, they asked what I ordered.  I said, "Wana-wana", they all laughed, but I still got the right juice so it worked out in the end.

                                        (Here's a cow we met, cuz I thought you all might like her)

  After breakfast we ran to the back of the hacienda to take turns on the rope swing we had found the previous afternoon.  You don't know the meaning of a good workout 'til you've been on a rope swing at altitude. It was exhiliarting and exhausting at the same time.  Once we were all suitably out of breath it was time to get onto the bus for a day trip to the nearby towns of Patate and Baños.



  In Patate we were dropped off in the city center by the plaza.  We were put into groups of tow to three people with sheets of questions to ask the people of Patate about their town. The questions ranged from the origin of the town's name to the population size, to the most important building in town. I was paired with Kaelyn and Isaac, I think we were all a bit nervous to go up to random people, but there was a sizeable crowd of people in the plaza due to a middle school science fair so we had our pick of people to question.

  We talked to kids, we talked to adults. Some people were helpful, some less so, but everyone was friendly.  Well, except when we asked some boys at a booth a few questions and their teacher came over to yell at us.  He made it clear that they were supposed to talk about their project, not random things.  So we asked them about their project and learned they had done a bit of research on the difference between organic pesticides and manufactured pesticides.  It was pretty interesting. Another group of middle schoolers had a project that tried to prove that music helped the growth of plants.  Kaelyn thought that was a ridiculous idea, but Isaac and I informed her that the sound waves do in fact interact with the plant's to promote cell growth. We ended up finding almost all the answers and met some very interesting people by the end of the hour.

  We arrived in Baños about 20 minutes later after passing the a crew excavating the pumice from the last time the volcano had gone off.  WE had lunch at an international restaurant run by an Italian man with a pony-tail.  The restaurant felt like it would have fit in just fine with the locales of Court Street in Athens. It was quaint, and cozy with board games and books to read while you relaxed or ate.    When I say it was international, it was quite international- They had Mexican, Italian, Hindu, Thai cuisines and more.  Each meal came vegetarian, but you could request beef or chicken if desired. I had two triangle enchiladas with pinto beans on the side and also salad. Isaac and Ross had Thai noodles, I tried a bit, they were quite tasty with a lightly spicy peanut sauce.

   Again when we returned we had time to rest, but did I? No, no I did not. We went for a walk. We found the pool which was not open for swimming, but it was indoors and that whole building seemed very nice with little rooms for massages and a small amount of workout equipment. Hmm, now I'm a little fuzzy, we might have walked down the path to say hello to the cows or the horse...or we might have played with Shoes for a bit.  I forgot to mention him before, Shoes is this very old bulldog that lives at the hacienda, he had a bit of a hard time walking and breathing, but damn he was cute.

  For dinner I had Seco de Pollo, which was very flavorful. Basically Seco de Pollo is a type of chicken basted in a light sauce, all though the name infers that it is a dry chicken..We were all tired after dinner but still excited by our surruoundings so we went star gazing for a bit.  Amazingly, for the first time during our trip th stars were magnificently visible.  Sadly the volcano was not.  We sat in the darkness talking about Harry Potter, the stars and life.

  Did we go to bed after this you ask? Clearly we must have after such a day full of activities, but no again we did not. Isaac came over to our room with his Ukelele. We howled and yowled, strummed and clapped our songs and rhythms like crazy men.  By the end were fairly decent at playing Oxford Comma by Vampire Weekend, Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners and one more I cannot remember. I think we kept the whole hacienda awake for awhile, but we didn't care, it was too much fun.  We've come up with a a bunch of ridiculous band names for ourselves so far which include: Humboldt y Las Fantasmas, and The
Singing Gringos.

Vampire Weekend
Oxford Comma