Baños

Baños was a gringo town, swarming with burnt-nosed Caucasians, nestled in a narrow valley, protected from Tunguruhua, an active volcano, looming over it, constantly coughing billows of thick ash, by a great slice of verdant mountain. The slice of verdant mountain had a long, thin waterfall. This cascaded down next to the thermal baths. The place was, then, unrubbish.

To see the volcano - and because we are bear-trackers, trained in walking - we scrabbled up the hillside, past some sleepy tapirs, to the pylons atop a huge pointy rock-wodge. Baños got tinier and tinier as we zig-zagged steeply up. But, long before we reached the ridge aimed for, we realised the clouds were going to foil us.

The clouds. They loved that volcano. They hugged it so tight. They would barely allow a glimpse. (They were still great, though. There were convex ones, dappled yellow, that suckled tight to the ridge tops like cake-icing, covering them completely.) Eventually, just enough air cleared for us to be able to discern which were volcano-coddling-clouds and which were spurts of mushrooming ash. It was enough: we had seen an active volcano.

A few days ago, as we lounged in the beach resort of Mancora, North Peru, Tunguruhua erupted again.

We saw just one person in the four or so hours it took to ascend. He was walking his dog; we gave him a wave, he waved back. Then we headed stutteringly downwards. The sun was sliding down the angle of the ridge, morphing from yellow to orange, and in the hazy valley swifts - little black and white ones - were dipping and weaving. Careening, really. One just missed my head, becoming the third bird to narrowly avoid a collison with me (the other two, for enthusiasts, were fighting hummingbirds on Tabla Chupa, Intag, Ecuador). Talking of hummingbirds, a few moments earlier, a little green fellow had lightninged into view above the ridge before zapping away. And, oh, also, there was an area of proper English woodland, complete with brown spines littering the floor and a piney smell, that we stumbled suddenly into and out of on the way down the mountain.




At dinner that night there was free pool while we waited for our meals. This is a theme in South America: free pool, free table football, and extreme Jenga and Connect 4 strewn around the bar. This probably doesn't seem like such a big deal, but to someone who has had to fork out a quid a game in Cardiff for the last few years, it's pretty special.

Next day: Canyoning. That is, abseiling down waterfalls. And blow me down did Andy and I look pretty darn super in our wet-suit get-up. Cor! It was lots of fun, but over too fast - and, without wishing to go all danger-junky, the waterfalls were quite small. Only afterwards did I realise the extent to which I had burned. Burned - and been savaged by mosquitos. For the next few days I wore an angry red skin-vest complemented by crusty orange welts speckling the ankles. I slept little. Now? Bite-free and golden brown, thank you internet; I sleep sandily but soundly.


Before we headed for Cuenca, our last stop in Ecuador before we hit the Peruvian coast, we felt we had to try the hostel's steam bath. After signing up for the 7.30am slot, we went for a pleasant visit to the sweltering thermal baths. An Ecuadorian Mackenzie Crook lookalike, clearly high on some drug, gurned at us from across the brown musty waters. Elsewhere, a viciously beautiful woman fondled her stoic boyfriend's immaculate face on the perch at the side of the pool. Other canoodling couples were not so pretty. Dipping one's head into the opaque pool was the best tactic when a giggling, droopy twosome embarked on yet another series of amorous ticklings.

We left, ate, went to bed, and scratched ankle through the night.

The steam bath. This little Ecuadorian chap placed us in wooden cuboids in which only our heads protruded. Think the robot designs of a three-year-old, or really rubbish-looking torture equipment. Then he left us and I got scared. A little lever inside the contraption altered the speed at which steam shot out from near your feet; but I was more concerned with just how the hell I was supposed to itch my face when my arms were trapped in a box. Blowing didn´t work - and there was the danger of saliva leakage, which would cause further itches. Meanwhile, my hair turned into gluey tendrils which stuck themselves into my retinas.

Luckily the Ecuadorian chap came back and released us, taught us the towelling down with cold water technique.

That was nice, I thought.

Then he put us back in the box.

This went on for a while: put in box; get itchy face; twitch face about in frustration at not being able to scratch; Ecuadorian man comes back; taken out of box; cold water towel down method.

But then subtle variations were brought in. One time, Andy got out of his box and with no warning at all the guy slung a big tub full of cold water over him. I was ready for that. But I wasn´t ready for the part where - after another five minutes itchiness in box - we were taken to separate rooms and instructed to sit down in a porcelain, curved inlet full of cold water up to the chest.

The Ecuadorian guy began to rub vigorous circles into my stomach.

"Wow," I thought. "I wouldn't have believed it was possible to win at life this much before breakfast. But here I am getting a stomach massage from a tiny Ecuadorian chap after being forced to sit in a robot box. Happy, as they say, days."

I was enjoying my stomach being rubbed so much that I wasn't really listening to what the guy was saying; didn't realise he was just demonstrating how I should do it until he was practically shouting at me. Eventually he saw that I finally understood and left. So I tended to my stomach alone for a while. Pleasant.

At the end we got a proper hose down during which we were instructed to assume lots of strange positions like some very wonky signalmen. For breakfast there were pancakes.