Christmas, 2015: Ecuador, part 3 - Baños - and NYE in NYC!
9:05 PMThis is the last installment of my Christmas blog posts, with a grand finale in New York City!
Our original plan after the Amazon was to go back to Quito, but the night before leaving we asked for recommendations and our guide told us to go visit Baños (the place, not the bathroom - yes, we were confused too, because baños was pretty much the only Spanish word I knew). He said that the place was called Baños because it's beside a volcano which causes hot springs, and the hot springs there are pretty famous.
We didn't end up going to a spa to enjoy the hot springs. I know, pity.
We drove from Coca to Baños, managed to not get lost, enjoyed the view during the drive (Ecuador is incredible!) and stopped from time to time to eat meals and also buy all the exotic fruit people were selling on the sides of the roads.
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| This is the view we had at the remote place we stopped at for lunch. This is also pretty much the constant view on the road - green, hilly, incredible. |
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| We got these weird grape-like fruits that Hera couldn't stop eating! They were really good and sweet but the skin was rough and Hera said the skin hurt her tongue... |
We didn't do anything that night because we got to Baños pretty late and we spent some time trying to find a hotel (we didn't have a reservation since it was so last minute, and for a while we were wondering if we were going to have to sleep in the truck).
The next day we explored the area. Our first stop was La Casa del Arbol, which was essentially a treehouse near the top of one of the mountains around Baños. Apparently, we were supposed to be able to see all of Baños from the treehouse, but it was unfortunately very foggy. We did end up going on a giant swing, which was very exhilarating and also a bit terrifying.
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| This is the view from one of the tree houses! We couldn't see the city but the greenery was very pretty. |
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| Me on the big swing suspended in mid air! You can see the fog in the back that hindered our view. |
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| Aaaand Hera's turn! (Actually, she went first.) She looks so tiny! |
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| Ugh how can a place be so pretty?? |
We went and hiked a waterfall nearby after lunch and managed to somehow attract more bug bites (apparently Hera and I are very tasty, much to our chagrin).
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| More prettiness. |
The next day, we spent the morning driving back to Quito because we were taking a red-eye flight that night to New York. After we had found a place to eat lunch and a park to eat our fruit, we decided to walk across Quito back to the chocolate shop that we had found the first day. Yes, the chocolate was that good.
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| The last picture I got of Quito - everything is so colorful! |
The show was incredible. Obviously I didn't get any pictures, but all of the costumery and practical effects were dazzling - the sheer amount of swarovski crystals on a single costume! - and the singing and dancing was obviously really amazing. I got really emotional when Aladdin starting to sing "Proud of Your Boy" because it was a song that had been written for the original Disney movie, but had been cut after they decided to kill off Aladdin's mother. Aladdin's mother stayed dead for the Broadway adaptation, but they brought back the song, and I'm pretty sure I about died in the theatre out of excitement.
By the time we got out of the show, Times Square was already being closed up for the Ball Drop (this was at about 3:30-4), and people were already beginning to swarm in. We pretty much had to fight our way out, and I was amazed that people were willing to stand outside in the cold for more than 8 hours just to watch the ball drop in real life.
We decided to stop by the Empire State Building before getting our NYE dinner, and the view was - well, the view was New York City, at night, with a very bright spot near Times Square. We could see the tiny people just swarmed there and waiting to watch the ball drop, but we couldn't see the actual ball because the pesky skyscrapers were in the way. I did, however, get to drool over the Chrysler building multiple times.
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| The view from Empire State! |
Dinner was quite tasty (I got a very nice Bacon tapas which was crunchy and slathered in spicy barbeque sauce - what more could a girl want?), and when we got back to the hotel, Hera wanted to stay up to ring in the New Year. Hera and I ended up watching Chopped (Hera loves food and she wants to be a chef when she grows up!) while my parents both fell asleep, and then we caught the last of the countdown.
All in all, Ecuador was an amazing experience - I want to go back, especially now that it's really cold in Boston again - and the whole trip was a great way to end 2015 and kick off 2016.
How did you spend your new year? Let me know!
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