Leaving Cuenca...Trip & Language Snafus; Beautiful Baños

Lindsay´s volunteer work wrapped up nicely. She began to connect with several of the older women who could communicate and looked forward to visiting with them in the mornings at the Hogar (home). In the afternoons, she was working with one little girl in English specifically and had a hard time saying goodbye to her. Our American housemate will take over the English tutoring and we´ll continue praying for her as we travel.

Mark completed his Spanish classes and ended up learning all the Spanish verb tenses in his six weeks of study! His language skills have improved immensely and comments from our host family and teachers indicate that his language ability is impressive. Though advanced, language mistakes are always likely to occur, and one happened the other day.
Mark: ¿Usted tiene huevos? (Do you have eggs?)
Shop Attendant: Sí. (Yes)
Mark: ¿Cuánto cuestan los huevos? (How much do they cost?)
Shop Attendant: Doce centavos cada uno. ¿Quiere? (12 cents per egg. Do you want?)
Mark: Nunca ahora... (Never now.)
Shop Attendant: [facial expression appears disturbed]
Mark: Después. (After.)
Shop Attendant: [facial expression returns to gentle smile]
*Mark wonders about the facial expression change, and then realizes that he should have used ``Nada ahora.´´ (nothing now) in place of ``Nunca ahora.´´ (never now) and begins to laugh.

On Tuesday, we departed Cuenca for Riobamba where we hoped to ride on La Nariz del Diablo train that switch-backs up a mountain and has beautiful views. Tourists have been known to ride on top of the train, which (of course) we wanted to do. We had heard you could buy tickets the day before so we departed Cuenca a day before schedule to get tickets. As it turns out, you can now email ahead of time to reserve tickets, so tickets have been sold out for weeks. Oops...should have looked into that more. We also learned that people have been unable to ride on the top of the train for over two years now. We will be emailing Lonely Planet and Footprints (travel guides) to update them on both parts of the information learned.
*Lesson learned: Do not rely completely on travel guide information that could be several years out of date. Always double check any important schedule/travel information!

After learning that we could no longer ride the train, AND Mark learned that Parque Nacional Sanguay access points were almost 2 hours away by bus, we decided to depart Riobamba (an industrial town) for picturesque Baños. Two hours by bus and we were in nature-lovers paradise: Baños. In the shadow of active volcano Tungurahua, Baños is located in a valley, completed encased by green mountains all around. These three pictures are views from our hostal (name: Llanovientos) room windows.

About the volcano,
don´t worry...Baños is protected by a hill between the 5000 meter volcano, so we expect to have time to evacuate if necessary. While here, we are enjoying the amazing hikes, mountain biking, cascadas (waterfalls), food(!), and baños (thermal baths heated by the ground beneath the volcano) that Baños has to offer! See pictures below.

A view of our hostal from above. Our room was the one on the far right corner, top floor (pinkish building in the center-right of the picture).

We had two huge windows through which strong mountain breezes blew.

Another view of our hostal room. We had a TV for the first time in over a year!!!

To start our day, we typically headed to Mark´s favorite breakfast spot: Rico Pan. We had eggs or fruit salad, freshly-baked bread, a freshly-squeezed juice of our choice, coffee/tea/hot chocolate, and jelly to go with our bread. It was a great start to a hiking day!
Off to hike...
Break during a hike to La Casa del Arbol, up the hill that shadows Baños from the volcano.
Mark looking up another mountain we hiked. After a long hike, the best thing for sore legs was a dip in the thermal baths...

Shown above is the bigger warm pool in Piscinas El Salado.

The Piscinas El Salado had five pools total, all different temperatures. The blue pool is regular water (not a thermal pool) and was quite chilly with the strong valley breezes blowing through.

A note about food. Lindsay has missed having loads of vegetables and Mark has missed a good steak. For our 10-month anniversary, we headed to Mariane´s where Lindsay enjoyed a beautiful salad, and shared Mark´s steak dinner with him. For dessert: chocolate & mora (blackberry) crepe. Yum!

Happy 10 month!
Yummy steak!
Beautiful salad!

Last week, we volunteered for a day on a WWOOFing farm at the base of Tungurahua and they had several avocado trees. Take a look at this HUGE avocado!! (Notice: It is filling BOTH Lindsay´s hands.)
Another common thing here in Ecuador is roast pig (chancho a la plancha). The one catch is that they roast the WHOLE pig and eat the skin and all. Look at the size of this thing, compared to 6´1´´ Mark!