Burner Billy Adventures: Oh how I Ecuador you - Cuenca, Banos, and Quilotoa

I bought a night bus from Mancora, Peru to Cuenca, Ecuador with traveling mate Dave from Scotland, however two hours before he departure, he looked at me and said "I think I'm gonna stay bit longer in mancora." That basically sums up the Loki hostel in Mancora, it sucks people in.

I, on the other hand, diligently walked away without looking back. Luckily, my new friends Charlotte, Wendy, and Steffi were cruising up to Cuenca on the same bus. This would be my second country crossing, but this time we did it at 2am...yikes! The bus ride was rather bumpy and getting up to go through customs in the middle of the night with awful morning breathe was not fun, but overall it was pretty painless. They didn't even check my bags, nor did they say much to me. Gracias and have a nice day.

Cuenca was probably the cleanest city I had seen so far on my trip. I really didn't do much as far as checking the sites outside of Cuenca (I heard Cajas National park is nice and there are some inca ruins north of the city, but I'm really bummed I didn't do go down to vilcabamba because I hear it's an amazing getaway that is muy tranquilo) because I needed to take it easy after Mancora. I went on a double decker tour bus where we stopped in Turi and got on this gigantic swing that took you over land's edge with an amazing view of Cuenca. Outside of that I had some pretty good food, enjoyed walking the city, and hungout with good company. I met Germans Lucas and Anton who will soon be venturing the US west coast by car and I will see again before trekking into the amazon, and then had a drink with Aussie Emma who told me you cannot buy cards against humanity in Australia. Sometimes people's stories are what make your trip memorable, however for this city, it was probably the amazing burrito and extra large Budweiser from chiplote that really sticks with me for Cuenca or maybe it was that "La Flaca" song by Jarabe de Palo that I heard at the bar. Who knows? Too many stories to count.

Baños, well it wasn't a bathroom, but more of a fun getaway in the depths of a rich valley close to an active volcano called tungurahua. Even though I could not see the tops of the many glorious peaks that cover Ecuador, I did partake in some activities in baños, first one being a biking and whitewater rafting adventure with a bunch of Argentina chicas. Outside from not staring at these girls, the hardest part was trying to communicate with them. Once again my shyness couldn't help me but say nothing to anybody in the group. However, I did rescue one girl after the other raft flipped, and later she did give me a wave and flashed her pretty smile on our car ride back to city. That's all the communication I needed. The other event I did was canyoneering and our guide could have been fred armisen's ecuadorian twin brother. He was absolutely hilarious and ecstatic to teach us about how much he loves canyoneering. It was a definitely a fun trek and afterwards, a group of us went to a delicious place to eat lunch, where we listen to Billie Holiday and swamped stories. But the day was not over yet, we had to do ONE more thing before I left Banos, and that required taking a cab to see the world famous "Casa del Arbol". It's a big old treehouse with a swing that overlooks the gorgeous mountains of Ecuador. Unfortunately, there was no swing this day when we got up there and clouds covered the entire landscape of what I am told are beautiful mountains. The treehouse was really neat though and reminded me of my childhood when my family and friends would climb around our neighbor's, the Bolles, treehouse (even though it wasn't really built within a tree. Ha). The atmosphere and serenity surrounding the treehouse make me feel like a kid again, when the only care in the world was making sure you were home for dinner.

I had been mulling around the idea of trying to go to Quilotoa before meeting Kathleen in Quito to do our amazon trip, but our guide book said "give yourself 2-3 days to explore this beauty". Well, I didn't have 2-3 days and pretty much wrote it off my list things to do....until I talked my German friend Annika. She was told you could see Quilotoa in one day starting from the city of Latacunga. I immediately backed my bag after our evening trek up to Casa del Arbol and joined Annika on her adventure to Quilotoa. And I'm soooo happy I did!! Quilotoa is almost identical to the beautiful Crater lake in Oregon and seeing it for the first time brought back the same emotions I felt when I saw Crater Lake for the first time...peacefulness. Approximately half the size of crater lake, me, Annika and our new friend Frank took off to walk around the whole lake in one day. Up to this point, it had pretty much rained everyday in Ecuador and if I was a betting man, I would have put money down that we weren't coming back dry. Well, mother nature was on our side this day. It actually rained while we were walking around, but luckily it was on the other side of the lake so we were dry and it give us some cool photos. The weather was a bit chilly up at the lake, but every step you took on the trail, you could just glance to your right and see the magical lake as your background. How cold it was outside didn't matter! We were the only souls hiking around the lake this day, and it's purity, vast openness, along with the remoteness made me feel like I was hiking along the PCT again. However, this hike had a hot meal and bed waiting for me at the of day and I wasn't carrying my life (at the moment) on my back! The bittersweet ending to the day was riding in back of the pickup truck to the bus station after our 5.5 hour hike around the lake. Sitting there I looked out to the beautiful landscape and open road, and I thought to myself "this seriously is how movies end". But this stories continues on and it brings us to beautiful jungle of what people love to call the Amazon!