It was me Pinto and Hugo...

..and Valeria, Hugo´s horse, but she has little to do with the story.

So when I showed up at the horse renting place, much as I had expected, it was only me who had signed up for riding. My guide, Hugo was a nice older man who smelled of sweat and cigaretts and spoke absolutly no English. He did speak though, a lot. Only, I did not understand a lot. But I had signed up and payed for 3 hours of horse back riding and that was what I was set on doing. The first 2 hours and 45 minutes were great. Pinto, my horse was a nice old man just like Hugo and slowly and quietly took me up the volcano. Every once in a while Hugo would yell at Pinto to speed up and smack his butt, but Pinto was not having it and just looked at Hugo like "hey, when you´re not on my back you can´t tell me what to do" and I didn´t mind the not so rapido tiempo. I figured horses are smart animals and Pinto probably knew I was not a cowgirl and adjusted the speed acordingly.

When we got to the top of the path, we got off the horses and hiked a little ways further up. Hugo told me the volcano errupted two years ago. He told me A LOT of other stuff too, but that´s pretty much all I got. Then we drank water out of a spring with natural gas. That was really cool, I´ve never seen anything like that before. It was just like a little creak but the water was bubbling and when we drank with our hands it tasted just like bottled mineral water.

Then we headed back and had we only stuck to the same track we took up, I think everything would have been fine. But Hugo wanted to treat me to a little something extra. Pinto did not. Almost back in the city, we went up a really steep dirt trail filled with a bunch of rocks. I guess the view from the top was supposed to be good. But Pinto decided not to be a nice but rather grumpy old man and didn´t want to go. He started throwing his head back and forth and tried to bite my hands. I got major Guatemala flashbacks, which is last time I was on a horse and got bucked off, and got off before he could throw me off. Hugo felt super bad and convinced me to get back on. Not once, not twice but five times. But horses are stubborn animals and Pinto said no. Even to Hugo. So finally I road Valeria back to their barn while Hugo walked Pinto, calling him a lot of Spanish names that I think were not so nice....

Back in Baños, me and Dylan (who had a great time water rafting and now wants to be a professional white water rafting guide) went to the hot springs and now it´s pouring down rain and we are using the internet at a place that has Skype so Dylan could make some phone calls. I think we are spending tomorrow here in Baños as well, probably renting bikes or something inexpensive like that.

Even though we´re not looking for jobs before Chile, it´s nice to see that many places are looking for volunteers here. That could be a good way to spend time without spending money and we might look into that later. I think it would also be a good way to actually pick up some Spanish. We are getting by ok, Dylan is so excited he knows more Spanish already than he did Chinese when leaving China, but that does not mean much. I really want to learn it better, but it´s hard when all you have is a dictionary. (The dictionary is great though, thanks Mariah!)