BIG DECISIONS - Van Life in Ecuador S5:E4
good morning guys we are taking a short drive to somewhere pretty cool and relaxing or maybe i should say hot and relaxing so we're going to take you all along with us for this fun journey today to get there is about 45 minutes we're driving through some pretty mountains surrounded by farm country it's just really a pretty part of ecuador but i also want to give you a good news update if you've been following along you know we are waiting on our new inverter to get shipped from the united states the latest tracking says it has left the facility of the airport here in ecuador so it has cleared customs and it is on the way to us so we think maybe three more days so two things number one the inverter has kind of crippled us more than we kind of thought in advance and you know we carry some spare parts in hindsight we're going to be on the lookout for a backup inverter because it was quite expensive to ship and the second thing is this is the second episode in a couple weeks where snow and i are actually color coordinated and i just want to let you guys know it was not planned but here we are looking like twins all right let's go have some fun we're getting closer and one thing is for sure we are off of the main roads and we're going through some rural ecuador uh in some small little towns we're almost there so one thing that has been true since we entered mexico and came all the way through central america and into colombia and now ecuador every small town no matter how small no matter how big whether it's a city has a town center and there is a park and they usually keep it nice and clean and there's going to be a coffee shop and a church right there every single time even this little town out here in the middle of these cane fields had a very nice little town square as we get closer to the area of the hot springs we see signs for several little hot springs resorts we have a certain one we're headed to because hans recommended it and it's on i overlander but we're passing lots of interesting little restaurants and we just passed a candy shop and the guy looked like he was literally out there making some candy and also sold lots of little floaties and stuff so i would say we're getting really close now okay here's the scoop we can park right here so it's seven dollars you go down the hill down there and along the river she said there's like 21 pools i only saw a few a lot of them are full um there's a restaurant there the restaurant here is closed restaurant the hotel that we can use we can stay the night no problem so in essence you know hans is 14 or 12 a night for two people it's 14 a night here and we get access to the pool nice so i felt the water they're all different temperatures so we're in good shape let's do it so first things first i'm hungry kurt's always hungry i went up to this little restaurant and checked it out it looks like actually a really nice restaurant up here and the hot springs are pretty cool and then they have this little gift here gift store here there's a few little gift shops they've got all sorts of little inflatables and things like that supposedly this place gets pretty busy on the weekend fortunately we're not going to be here for that but still kind of a unique little place so let's go grab some lunch so one of the things that we've learned about ecuador is the prices vary quite a bit so if we're in more of like a local style restaurant where they have typical food usually the prices seem to be about two to four dollars for a meal but when you kind of get into the little nicer places that are more westernized or americanized you actually start to see american prices so you can see here a hamburger and french fries looks like it's a double cheeseburger with eggs everything is 12. but anyway the food looks delicious here all right we just got a pitcher of lemonada which has become our favorite thankfully they do have ecuador and then they just sat some little snacks what are these little bugs no they're not bugs i think they're those fat corn kernels we saw i think they call them mote m-o-t-e but they haven't cooked them they've heated them up like we would do popcorn i think maybe like they're deep fried or something when you bite into them there is a popcorn flavor without a doubt but they're soft right yeah they're not hard well they're maybe like a peanut you like them i do like them all right americano de sauno huevos revolto's queso snow what'd you get croissant we're splitting a breakfast there you go and the coffee was served a little unusual if you can see it's instant coffee grounds but they brought out a thermos of warm milk or cream and so you mix it in there how is the tastes coffee all right guys we had our little breakfast snack now we are bathing souped up and we are headed in time for some hot spring soaking so we have heard we have not confirmed y'all can tell us if we're right or wrong but arko iris or evis means rainbow all right we just got here and we've got a little hose showing us around host is showing us around oh look at all these pools this is like private there are 17 17 pools do you own this this is cut okay perfect you can go this way but that is one of my favorites going in all right snow's going in here guys so they have 17 pools here supposedly with all different temperatures of water this one's pretty hot nellie told us this one is the perfect one they got these little private stalls over here how's the temperatures now it's uh it's gonna be a little hot for you it's perfect for me but i think if you sit up on the edge and just put your feet in you'll be good so there you go while she gets in guys you know what i'm going to do i'm exploring searching for a brighter day leaving yesterday behind looking forward is is finally feel alive in addition to the pools and all the beautiful flowers they have these picnic tables down here and i think down here i even saw some barbecue grills they have showers and bathrooms and places to snack and all that type of stuff ah this place is really pretty nice and it's nestled here in this valley and so we have this little river running beside us i don't know for sure as to whether or not the river is the hot river but it's pretty nonetheless and you can see down here they have the grill area that i mentioned so there's a little bench so it looks like there's little personal grills here and another big seating canopy seating area i'm guessing this is for a small event or maybe for a restaurant and they have a soccer field down here but a simple little place you can see right up there up that hill is where the van is parked all right we're gonna play a little game hot pool cool pool the way this is designed this is the hottest hot tub here which is pretty hot it's hard for me to get in and then right next to us is super cold like like ice river cold cool the idea is to sit in this one and get nice and hot and then hop in the next one and hang out and get chill and do it back and forth it's supposed to be really good for your circulation all right here i go i'm getting out of the hospital into this cold hole and dally just got in here like she's super tough don't think my blood from freezing it's already turning blue nelly's got me moving to the other pool my time's up here so it's time to get out of the cold and into the heat now what i will tell you is this move is a lot easier i can't even tell you're in hot water at first so the transition actually is like nothing it feels pretty good kurt is continuing his hot and cold treatment but i went to find some shade because we are close to the equator and even if it's not hot i promise you it is easy to get a lot of sun down here and i want to show you what i found at this shady spot it's the coolest use of recycling tires i have ever seen look at this table and chair set and i have sat in it guys it is super comfy look at that how creative huh all right the next room to play in is the steam room so it's naturally steamed i just stepped into it plugged my glasses up instantly i'm going all right see how the hot water comes down snow is turning into some kind of crazy goat it's not true she's going up on this lifeguard stand she's probably about to get us kicked out of here so what you guys might not know when i was in high school back in florida i was a lifeguard at a water park four summers in a row so this feels natural all right guys we've soaked we've hotted we've cold we've relaxed we've looked at flowers the heat of the day is here the sun is bright i'm gonna go to the van check on the kitties do a little relaxing there but the good news is this place does not close until way after dark so we'll be back all right so we're leaving the hot springs walking video leaving the hot springs walking back to the van this nice lady's selling frutas ks she says it's a sweet fruit we're gonna try it and show y'all what it looks like on the inside one dollar no uno all right what did we get ourselves into actually some a new fruit we get to try i'm excited and we got to help out a local so win-win let's go cut it all right if you remember the restaurant was closed earlier for lunch so we had a little snack to hold us over but now we're headed up to the restaurant to have a dinner early butt or lunch but there's a couple restaurants up here there's a fancy one in the hotel which you guys saw earlier and then up the street there's a tipico restaurant so once you guys in the comments tell us whether you think snow is gonna pick the fancy one or the typical one and we'll let you know in a minute all right i'm gonna tell you the decision wasn't easily made we're walking up to the tipico restaurant to look at the menu we already know what we have on the other one and i even know what i'm gonna get on the other one it looks like they have some steak or chicken or hot dogs and french fries a frittata the garbanzo the soup and the trucha she's she's picking local she's picking typical i like her style i can't i gotta be honest do all right snow what'd you decide and why we went with local i bypassed the fancy hotel restaurant so we could get some local cuisine and this is called sachitas with or salchitas are basically hot dogs i love hot dogs so this works out good for me yeah and i got some sort of meat the french fries and a salad as well so i had really no idea what we're ordering but it looks good and the entertainment is really awesome the big surprise guys we had no idea it's nice i wanna run with you i wanna let go arms open wide with a life to call our own we can go anywhere where do we go i wanna chase down every dream we've had live every moment like it's gonna be our last turn away from fear anywhere where do we go from here it won't give way to the night we'll keep on reaching reaching up to the sky all right so it just looked so pretty with all the flowers and the steam we lied we did take y'all with us on this recent visit down to the hot springs it was incredibly relaxing and much better at night even though it was great in the daytime but you may remember this afternoon we bought this fruit from the local lady for a dollar and we kind of been eating all day so this is kind of our little light evening snack so hopefully that's good but she also which you guys don't know is she also came back by and brought us some oranges and so we're gonna have a little fruit salad first we're going to try this stuff and see how it works and this actually works out good guys because we can't cook because our electrical system is still broken how do you how do we cut this i have no idea all right we'll cut this end off it's kind of got the texture of aguayo banana i wonder if it is oh so this might be someone advises to just open it and scoop it out with a spoon it definitely looks like a guava banana this is just a different style it's like the guayo banana insides if you guys can see it and i think you can just take a spoon and spoon this stuff out that's what everybody told us last time so try the spoon and i'll taste it it's good we are definitely eating all this guys okay all right we're gonna scoop it into a bowl add in a little bit of other fruit and that's gonna be our non-cooking dinner so we got some of that fresh fruit we've got the whatever it is fruit guava banana and then we've got the oranges and some bananas and then we sprinkled a little walnut and some raisin and some cinnamon in there so it almost kind of looks like a rice pudding con texture it's a fruit salad night guys i'm the chef so i have to taste it you won't like them all right that means i got to turn this camera off and get in there quick guys but the rest all right good morning everyone we parked here next to this agua tarbalas arco iris which means rainbow but it's not a farm but they do have all sorts of animal life cows pigs and horses we've seen them bring through here so and it's not the most level spot but i always like to spot where we can take a nice walk and where we have good views and that fits the bill you could probably see we weren't even exactly level but man the hot springs were money it was a great way to start the morning and yesterday when we went up here for lunch i saw another sign for another one about 3 000 meters up 300 meters of the way but i'm gonna go up and check out this other agua tamales fan of that this bull got off his rope and it's headed up the it just so happens this bull is walking up the same road i am so i got to be careful we don't have a running with the bull scenes kind of have on a red shirt so just got to be a little cautious here that guy don't try to get me so here's a sign i saw yesterday aguasavia spa 300 meters just followed the cow it looks like we got some switchbacks here this big old bull's still leading the way i don't know what i'm gonna do if he turns around and stops i can see the building up there but we're gonna scratch this one there's a few other agua turmoils along this road see if we can't do a little adventuring today so we can play in a different august tamales so we found another one santa agua little guyenas and they're cool you can see the entrance and we also found a place to have breakfast so we're headed in here to don francisco's to have a little desouna so one of the things that we've found so far in ecuador and i don't know if it's just this region but when they bring you coffee it's the freeze-dried instant coffee so you get the hot water and you kind of mix your own coffee now it's one valdez so that means it's from columbia but it's been our experience that this is typically not the best quality that usually gets exported my standard i gotta have some eggs for breakfast and we also have some toasted bread with queso so this morning we get a little egg sandwich kurt tells me he got the deluxe package what's that kurt but it's ten dollars each for this it was two dollars for parking welcome to spa day number two so we're at our second hot springs and you can see that water flowing down the hill right there that water is hot and the way this happens guys is it is the the fluid and the rock deep down in the earth like at a depth of 10 000 kilometers that's where the magmatic chamber is for this hot springs outlet it interacts and then there is a steam reservoir they say around 1500 to 2000 meters and that's where the heat come from now what's cool about this is not only are they able to do really awesome hot springs for people to come visit like this but this one itself the environmental impact is it is able to do six milliwatts of power that replaces the consumption of 800 000 barrels of oil so not only do we get hot springs but they use these things to create energy pretty cool huh guys as always guys kurt is making friends kirby is it good is it cold bubbly all right two completely relaxing day at these aguas termales it was just so tranquilo something about hot springs but i have a question for snow okay what was your favorite of the two okay they're both very relaxing the water's both clean it has a yellow tent at both of them but it's clean water i like them both but i think i have two reasons why i have my favorite my favorite is the one from yesterday the first reason is the flowers were amazing there they had pretty flowers at the one today but yesterday's flowers were off the chart and the one today made you wear swim caps ah that's true yeah the one yesterday you didn't have to wear them and i didn't like that so yesterday's was my favorite but they're both wonderful so the second one had this totally like cold water and hot water coming out right beside each other and i was able to get up under there and massage my shoulders with that cold water while standing in the hot water so i really like that but i liked both places equally yeah but anyway this is where we wind her down right we'll see you guys in a few days if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our 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2022-04-17 15:42
