Baños

E.J. here.
So we finished the Quilotoa Loop and headed a bit south to a town called Baños (baths), which is known for its hot thermal springs. We had lined up our first volunteering gig in the village of Runtun, in the mountains above Baños.
For those unititiated, workaway (workaway.info) is a non-profit networking program where (once you join) you can search for and contact different places to volunteer a few hours a day from free room and board and often meals. The median expectation seems to be 4-5 hours a day, 5 days a week, but some expect you to work part time 7 days a week.

Last week we had our first workaway experience in Runtun, working mornings on a family farm and it was a great experience and we're already looking forward to more. At its best, its a mutually beneficial situation where we save $ by not spending on lodging, while getting cultural exposure, language exposure and getting off the Lonely Planet pipeline of tourists, while the family gets economical help on whatever the venture is. Mostly, we've seen farm stays and helping out at hostels, but there are other stays out there.

The farm we stayed at primarily draws income from several greenhouses of two fruits traditional to the region. The first was tomates de arabol (tree tomato) and the other was babaco. Our first two days of work were in the tomates de arbol greenhouses. The first day, we harvested the ripe tree tomatoes off the vine, which got to be pretty back breaking after 4 hours, collecting 5 gallon buckets of the gorgeous organgey-red tomatoes and lugging them to one side of the greenhouse to big collection bags, which we then loaded into the back of a truck.

The second day, we tied low-hanging and burdened branches to an overhanging scaffolding system, so the branches don't break under the weight of the ripening, juicy tomates.

Under the greenhouse. Tomates de Arbol

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we helped out with the hand-construction of the new house they are building on the farm. They are building a brick and mortar house for workawayers and a new bedroom for Monica, Holger and little Emily.
As it was, we stayed in a dorm in the main house, owned by the grandparents, Wilo and Alba. The workaway was coordinated by their English-speaking daughter, Monica and we worked mostly with Monica's husband, Holger (pronounced ohl-gehr).  Most of the time, Monica was busy teaching english in a school in Baños, although she was in the greenhouses with us the first couple of days, not having to teach.

Little Emily (2 1/2), helping Holger lay bricks

We would get up each day a bit before 7am and help make breakfast before heading out around 8am. We'd work until noon, more or less and then help make lunch. Our afternoons were free and then we'd usually help prep for dinner in the evenings. Each meal would typically be eaten in a big family, with Wilo, Alba, Monica, Holger, Emily and then the volunteers, depending on who was around. There was a Canadian woman named Louise who had been there for a week when we got there and a British woman named Lou arrived a few hours after us. We all slept in a dorm room with bunk beds. And it was cold int he mountains after dark! But I digress.
Meals were prepared as a team and the feasts were worth it. The diet was vegetarian except for two meals and Alba could do magic with beans and potatoes and lentils. Typical breakfast might be some rice with a tomato salad mixed into it with a kind of porridge/ oatmeal drink and a glass of juice. Lunch was often a bowl of vegetable soup of some sort and then a bowl of beans/ lentils and rice. Dinner would often be some variation thereof, but a more sedate affair, except for the night we had fried trout, fresh out of a mountain fish farm with roasted potatoes.

Dinner prep: Holger, Louise, Emi, Maggie and Monica

Awkward Dinnertime photo: Wilo, Alba, Monica, Holger, and Maggie

But it wasn't all work and food. We went down into town a few times in the afternoon to go to some of the thermal baths, which was lavish after the harvesting and hauling of bricks. Baños has several bathhouses. We made it to two of them. The first was at the base of a waterfall. The volcanically heated and mineral-rich water was distributed in a half dozen pools of different temperatures. There was a shower next to the hottest bath that was just redirected waterfall runoff, ice cold, so you could soak until you couldn't take it and then step under the waterfall stream and drop your body temperature. I went back and forth a few times

That weekend we also went on a long (mostly downhill/ down mountain bikeride to see a series of waterfalls between Baños and Puyo and it was retty incredible. We got lucky because it rained in Baños more days than not when we were there but we had a gorgeous day for the bike ride. 

We also hiked up the mountain from the farm to "the tree house", where they have this epic "swing at the end of the world" with a pretty amazing lookout. Maggie loved it but full disclosure, I was having a caffeine headache at the time, acted like a total brat and wouldn't go on the swing because I felt like I was trapped in a tourist trap nightmare. It wasn't that bad, I was just having a bad day.

 Last but not least, there were two adorable things on the farm. The first was Emily, the daughet of the couple and the second were the 2 baby calves, a couple of months old. But of these additions to the farm greatly upped the cuteness levels to sometimes unmanageable levels. It was pretty great.

  

 

We finished up at the farm on Tuesday morning and took a 7 hour bus south to Ecuador's third largest city (and ex-pat stronghold) Cuenca. I'll leave Maggie to cover that stretch in a few days