Thunder on the Mountain

On the first or second night of our housesitting stint in Baños, the Geminids meteor shower was presenting a magnificent display of shooting stars in the northern hemisphere, and some of the "how-to-watch" articles I read said that they might be visible past the equator.  At about 11 p.m., I turned off the lights in the house and stepped carefully off the porch and up the driveway toward the back of house, away from the lights of town.  My view of the sky was limited by the roof of the house on my left, mountains straight ahead,  the lights of Baños to my right and Tungurahua and her sisters behind me.  But the dome of the heavens directly overhead was undiminished by these limitations; rather, the boundaries provided focus so that my eyes and attention did not wander across miles of undifferentiated sky.

It was a perfect night for stargazing. No moon, no clouds and the volcano had not yet begun filling the sky with detritus from the bowels of the earth.  Although Baños, at some 3,400 feet is about a third the altitude of Quito, the stars seemed closer here – closer, in fact, than anywhere I'd ever seen them. "Twinkle" is too small a word, too tame an activity, for what those stars did. Rather than tiny specks of distant flickering light, some of them looked to be an inch across and only a mile or two away. Surely this was how the stars looked to the first humans who looked up and wondered "why?"
"To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free ..."

 It was a night such as this in Puerto Morelos, a Mexican seaside village, that first made Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" one of my favorite songs. That night I did lift one hand to the stars and dance on the circus sands. There was no dancing on this night, not perched on the side of a mountain in darkness so dense I could not see my feet. This night I just watched.

I looked for familiar constellations, wondering how different the sky would be this far south. I had not done my homework, so all I could do was wonder. Was that Orion? Was that a dipper? Surely those two are planets ... can I see the Southern Cross from here?

I saw no shooting stars that night, but I felt no disappointment. In all my years of watching "Star Trek," I'd never been this close to the stars.

THE MOUNTAIN AWAKENS

The plume rising from Tungurahua

Tungurahua awoke on December 14, a Friday, the day after we took up our temporary residence in Baños.  We were oblivious both to the fact of the imminent eruption and its consequences to us.  That day we may have heard an explosion or two and attributed it to some local celebration.  We may have heard a deep rolling rumble and thought it was distant thunder. 

We had walked into town the afternoon before and stocked up on the foods we'd need, so we spent that day and the next getting comfortable in our new surroundings.  One of the attractions of the house is a huge semi-outdoor playroom furnished with a foosball table, a basketball hoop and a ping-pong table, as well as lots of potted plants, hammocks, a dining table and still with plenty of room for us to do yoga. For two days, we played ping-pong. Lots of ping-pong. And although the thunder became more frequent and the wind had picked up, the rain did not come.

On Sunday we decided to walk back into Baños. We didn't need anything in particular except a change of scenery, but the large outdoor market would be open and those are always appealing.  And I wanted to stop by a pharmacy and pick up some decongestant.  The wind made the walk unpleasant.  It carried a load of grit that got in our eyes, noses and hair.  As we reached the edge of town, we began to notice the locals had their faces covered with scarves or dust masks.  This wind must be a regular feature of life in Baños, I thought.  Just then, a loud explosion rocked the street.  We looked at each other and said, "Could that be the volcano?  I bet it is!"

Lunch in the making.

Bourdain, eat your heart out.

We continued into town and found the market in full swing.  We wound our way among the displays of exotic fruits, tempting fresh veggies and live and dead animals until we reached a lunch stand that we could not have passed by under any circumstances.

A large part of a roasted pig was displayed on a folding table, along with a sort of fried dumpling made from yuca (manioc in U.S. textbooks), luscious red tomatoes, pickled onion slices, chickpeas and shredded lettuce. All of this was piled in layers in a Melamine bowl, lettuce on the bottom and meat on the top.  We ate it right down to the lettuce, and if a shred or two got onto the fork by accident, well, life is an adventure.  We were sitting under a volcano that was hailing rocks down on the roof over our heads and were going to worry about a little lettuce?

After lunch, we hurried to pick up my medicine and caught a taxi back to the house.  By now, the explosions were coming regularly and we noticed the plume rising directly in front of our house and blowing back across Baños. 

 Another mountain stands between Tungurahua and the house, hiding the volcano from our direct view, so we could never see whether Tungurahua was living up to its Quichua name, which means "throat of fire."  A more appropriate name, from our experience, would translate as "fountain of grit.

Plants collected a heavy load of volcanic debris.

Over the next several days, the grit covered everything – the porch, the flowers in the yard, the potted plants, even the ping-pong table.  The column of cloud spread out until it covered the whole sky, and the only time we ventured outside was to let Maxwell do his business in the yard and to try to capture images and video of new clouds rising over the mountain after each wall-rattling explosion.

 Rain would save us, we thought, and we began examining the clouds for signs that they held water instead of ash.  Finally, the wind shifted and the blessed rain came, washing away the grit and ash, clearing the air and luring us outdoors once again.  We found it funny and maybe a bit ironic that we'd often misstate the natural disaster we were experiencing. "Volcano" just wasn't in our usual lexicon; we'd call it "the tornado," laugh, correct it to "the hurricane," and laugh again.  The natural disasters that come easily to our minds both have to do with rain, but this time the rain was what we wanted most.

A ZOO AND A BATH
After three days inside, we started back toward Baños.  We got only as far as the crossroads at the head of the gorge, deciding to turn left to explore.  We were looking for a footpath leading down into the gorge.  We didn't find that, but we did find a great little zoo – I read later that this is considered to be the best zoo in all of Ecuador.  There's also an aquarium and a serpentarium across the street, but by the time we'd seen the zoo, we were tired and looking for lunch.

With our time in Baños growing short and the volcano's spume still blowing away from us, we decided that we really wanted to try out the attraction that gave the town its name – the thermal springs.  A city map we'd picked up at the tourist office showed four or five spas, the largest of which was on our side of town.  We packed our swimsuits, put on our hiking boots and set out in search of Baños El Salado.  It was not easy to find.  We ended up hiking waaaaay up the mountain in front of our house to a grungy little one-road  village with the spa at the end of the road.  We could see the pools, but the spa was closed.  Why, we never learned. 

Seco de chivo

There was nothing to do but turn around, head back down the mountain and make our way clear across town to the town's most famous spa, Las Piscinas La Virgen.  This one was open and active, but not crowded.  We chose the hottest pool and shared it with one other couple, middle-aged Ecuadorians who insisted that we stand under a shower of cold water funneled straight off a high waterfall.  I'm not much for cold water, but I did it, and it made the water in the pool feel even hotter than before.  After alternating hot and cold a couple of times, we dried off and headed off in search of seco de chivo – goat stew with rice – and Pilseners grandes, the local beer in 20-ounce bottles.

More photos of Banos.