When I woke up in the morning, I was eager to step out of the airport terminal to breathe some fresh South American air for the first time. But before that I needed to figure out where to go. I knew that I had to take a bus heading to a town called Baños, but get down before that at Salasaca. But what I didn’t know was where to find this bus. I couldn’t see any tourist information desk, so I decided to ask some random woman who seemed to be part of the airport staff. There was of course a massive communication gap between us, but I thought that the combination of the words “bus” and “Baños” should suffice in getting the meaning across.

It did not suffice. The woman led me straight to a toilet, smiled as if to say “you’re welcome”, and walked away leaving me totally confused. Once I had recovered, I turned around and asked another young lady. She seemed even more confused than I was, simply pointed to the toilet door behind me and scampered away quickly. I was utterly perplexed. I thought that maybe the toilet did hold the key. Maybe it had a poster with bus stop locations or something. So I went inside and studied the walls, the mirrors, looked inside the stalls, and even behind all the doors but there was nothing to indicate a bus stop. Thankfully it was still quite early, so there was no one else in the toilet, or else my weird loo-behaviour would have been sure to arouse suspicion.

Not to give up that easily, I walked to another end of the terminal where I met a group of three middle-aged women. They were part of the airport cleaning staff, and I repeated my request to them. One of the women asked, “Baños?” while doing a quick squatting motion with her hips and blowing a fart from her mouth. This made all three women burst out in laughter and me red in the face. It suddenly dawned on me why I was being led to the toilet. In that split-second, I had correctly gathered that the Spanish word for a toilet was Baños.

I quickly changed tactics, and asked for the other big town near Salasaca - Ambato. This time around, I got very clear directions on how to get from the airport to the bus-station.

South America. Oh yeah!!

It was a long seven hour bus ride to Ambato. It was awesome to look outside and see some really new things. There were plants and animals and birds that I never knew existed. The bus stopped midway to fuel up and I took the chance to stretch my legs and breathe the fresh mountain air. My co-passengers were buying some dark brown meat from a small shop, so I bought myself a plate as well. It was chewy and like nothing I had had before. Every time the bus stopped, people would come inside selling stuff to eat. I bought one of each type of thing. Every opportunity I got, I would fix my gaze on people getting in or out or just standing around. I was mesmerized by them - their clothes and their mannerisms. It was hard to believe that I was witnessing from such close quarters, life on almost exactly the opposite side of the planet to where I had spent most of my life so far. It was magical.

First look at Ecuador from the bus

From Ambato to Salasaca centre was a short bus ride. But I still had to get from there to “Hostal Pachamama” where all the volunteers who worked at Katitawa lived. I asked one of the jeep-taxis standing there, and he offered to drop me off for 2 USD. I was to later learn that I could have taken a shared jeep ride for 10 cents, but whatever.

Hostel Pachamama, with my future good pal, who I named 'Blacky'

When I reached, the front door of the hostel was locked. There was no doorbell and I knocked in vain for a good 10 minutes. Finally I gave up and went from the side to the back. There was a flight of steps that led to a patio, and there, sleeping on a hammock was a guy. I gently woke him up and introduced myself. The guy’s name was Olivier. He was from France and also one of the volunteers at Katitawa. Olivier was super-excited (I think even more than me!) that today was my first day in South America.

After dumping my bags, Olivier took me to the library, which was quite some distance from the hostel. He told me that the school is also a bit of a walk up the side of a hill. En route to the library, we met some other volunteers - Dotahn from Australia, and Emma & Damir from Sweden. At the library, I met Robert (aka Roberto) who was in charge of Katitawa. Robert was a 78 year old American pensioner who had been running the school for the last 6 years or so. I was to later learn that the school was funded almost wholly by Robert’s pension and donations from people, mostly past volunteers.

The blue building is the Biblioteca (Library)

Back at the hostel, I met Emmily (Dotahn’s wife and also from Australia), Ed & Tanya from the UK, and Morgane from France. All of us then played football together. All I remember from the game was that my team had four players while the opposing team had seven, and still we won hands down :)

The Salasacan valley from the patio of the hostel

As it so happened, I had arrived on the day when everyone had planned to have a dessert party. Over some tasty dessert, I met Rick & Nigel from Northern Ireland. Nigel had a black eye from the time he was mugged after withdrawing money from an ATM. It was a grand welcome party for me with many different types of delicious desserts, washed down with copious amounts of Cuba Libre.

Dessert Party