day trip #1: el chorro de girón

who likes going to see waterfalls? not me. i have the same ambiguous relationship with them as i do with live music. i like the sound of it, but i don't want to just stand there and look at it. i need to move. perhaps that's where i've been going wrong: i should have been dancing at these waterfalls.

ivan and i headed out to girón, a town ~ 35km from cuenca, from where we took a little truck up to the 'chorro', or 'jet'. a fat bastard at the entrance charged us $2 each to get in, and made us sign documents waiving our rights to any form of compensation if we got injured, in addition to making us promise not to go swimming 'because the water was over 5m deep'. i couldn't understand the link between depth and danger, but when i think about it, i've never seen an ecuadorian in an international swimming competition, so perhaps these people just sink.

a few minutes' walk through some scrub and we were there. it was pretty, and to spice things up a bit (much to my friend's delight/distress) i tore off my clothes and cast myself into the dangerously deep (and freezing) waters of the waterfall for some ecuadorian FKK. ahhh...it's good to get back into it...

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after playing with some llamas back at the entrance (or were they alpaca? i can never tell), we headed up to the second waterfall which the fat bastard said was inaccessible, dangerous, and couldn't be done without a guide. we must have done something radical by following the track that led us straight there. this track was much longer, a good hour or so, and passed over sweeping green fields of alpine goodness with panoramic views of the valley and beyond. it was lush, beautiful perfection. it's so damn good to get out into the mountains. and that's it for day trip #1. one thumb up for el chorro of girón.