Southern Ecuador

We left Otavalo with our new dog, Lucy, and headed towards Quito. The driving day was short, and we started around late afternoon but it took us till around twilight to get through. We continued on for a while until we saw a forlorn gas station where we camped. There were two clown mobiles parked in the parking lot, with hideous clown faces on the fronts. It was chilly outside as we were up in the mountains.
The next day we drove through a town that had a huge park with interesting playground equipment  There was a maze, a rock climbing wall, a bridge that crossed over a little lake to a circular island, and across almost the whole park was an unused zipline. There was also a chain tunnel that led to a tower like thing where slides led back to the ground that resembled a giant Dalek. Llamas were walking around the rock climbing wall. We stayed there about an hour and then left.

We stopped at a brand new mall. At the food quart there was a restaurant that sold only guinea pig, which wad quite expensive. The mall was empty and new, with hardly any people.
Father went to a Ford next door and went somewhere with the trailer. When we were finished at the mall the security guard at the Ford store led us to where Father was. We had a while before he was done, so Ryan went out and found a vet.

Our next destination was Baños, which means ‘bathroom’ in Spanish. Baños was on the edge of a sort of gorge, with a river through it. We left the trailer at a restaurant and started driving around. There were ziplines across the cliff which I really wanted to go on but Mother did not let me.
We drove to Tena, which was about seventy-five miles away from Baños. It was considerably hotter there than in Baños. It was a nice town, with a park and whatnot. We couldn’t stay there long since we had to be back to our camping spot by dark.
The drive there was beautiful, right along the cliff fringed by leafy plants and the like.
We got home and retired.
The next morning we went to the hot springs there. Some pools were cold, most were tepid, and there was one that was very hot. The water was cloudy with minerals, and it healed some of my cuts.  Afterwards, we walked around Baños. We went to an ice cream store, which had tasty ice cream, such as coconut, chocolate, passion fruit and blackberry.  We left Baños and drove along. We were in the tepid jungle now, with jungle pigeons! Jungle pigeons seemed prettier then feral, city pigeons.  Something we had seen a lot was clown-head garbage cans. They all had creepy, sinister looking clown-heads stuck to the top.
Once again, we ascended into the upper Andes. It became much cooler. We drove until nightfall, unable to find somewhere to park for the night. We finally found somewhere, and camped.  The next morning it was rainy, and we planned to head on, until someone wanted to buy the trailer.  We conversed with them about it and decided to contact them when we came back up.
Jennah