Banos.
The ´n´should have a hat on and it should be pronounced Banyos but the keyboard doesn´t have anything fancy like that.
Most of the time it means toilet but sometimes it means bath, especially if your town has a thermal spring. It can lead to embarassing misunderstandings, like the time I was asked to leave the restaurant for taking a wash in the toilet bowl or when I used the swimming pool for...well never mind, you know what I mean.
Banos is very lovely, regardless of whether you are thrown bodily down the steps of the thermal baths by a burly women with a recently adjusted opinion of the British.
Volcanic ash settles on this spa town more often than is entirely necessary. The necklace of active volcanoes that ring the town, erupt to one degree or another, every five minutes, shelling the hillsides with rockets made of red hot boulders the size of cars.
The closest is a mere 5km away and were it ever to do more than burp, Banos and most of the surrounding countryside would be a thing of the past.
In the meantime they get as much super heated water as they want, completely free, albeit that it is brown and smells of urine. There is only one problem.
It´s the hydrogen cyanide and arsenic that would worry me if I swam there more than once in a life time. To be fair to them, it is an informed choice as the large sign on the wall above the main pool spells it out in letters three feet tall.
But, it probably explains the odd behaviour that the Banyans display from time to time - like lynching people, burning bodies and throwing people off bridges. I think the constant strain of never knowing whether you are going to be obliterated by a wall of lava travelling at 600mph may also have a part to play. It probably also explains whey some of them have such a lacsidasical approach to life.
Why bother.
Manyana is a word most people associate with sombrero toting Mexicans who have found a comfortable place to sleep off the Tequila, but it applies here too. Not the Tequila, you understand - they do make it and drink it but call it Punta.
It´s just that sometimes, things don´t happen when they are supposed to - and sometimes things do when they are not.
Builders don´t turn up all over the world but here they are very fastidious about phoning you up to tell you they are on their way before not turning up. If a Banyan doesn´t know the way, they will give you comprehensive directions anyway and shrug off the complaint if you ever see them again.
And they spend far too long on festivals - one hundred and nintey days off a year for them, at the last count, each one with at least three competing thirty-two peice marching bands and a life-size icon of the saint in question trundled around the streets in a glass display case with armfuls of flowers and palm leaves.
There must be a large warehouse on the outskirts of town to store it all.
The drum section in every festival band plays at an entirely different rythm to the brass which wanders in and out of tune at will. I blame the altitude - but noone really minds as there is always something more interesting to do.
Like watching the man in the main square letting off rockets from his half finished beer bottle - which he is still holding and from which he nonchalantly sips between launches.
If the choice was between flaming boulders and fire-crackers?
I know which I would choose.
The ´n´should have a hat on and it should be pronounced Banyos but the keyboard doesn´t have anything fancy like that.
Most of the time it means toilet but sometimes it means bath, especially if your town has a thermal spring. It can lead to embarassing misunderstandings, like the time I was asked to leave the restaurant for taking a wash in the toilet bowl or when I used the swimming pool for...well never mind, you know what I mean.
Banos is very lovely, regardless of whether you are thrown bodily down the steps of the thermal baths by a burly women with a recently adjusted opinion of the British.
Volcanic ash settles on this spa town more often than is entirely necessary. The necklace of active volcanoes that ring the town, erupt to one degree or another, every five minutes, shelling the hillsides with rockets made of red hot boulders the size of cars.
The closest is a mere 5km away and were it ever to do more than burp, Banos and most of the surrounding countryside would be a thing of the past.
In the meantime they get as much super heated water as they want, completely free, albeit that it is brown and smells of urine. There is only one problem.
It´s the hydrogen cyanide and arsenic that would worry me if I swam there more than once in a life time. To be fair to them, it is an informed choice as the large sign on the wall above the main pool spells it out in letters three feet tall.
But, it probably explains the odd behaviour that the Banyans display from time to time - like lynching people, burning bodies and throwing people off bridges. I think the constant strain of never knowing whether you are going to be obliterated by a wall of lava travelling at 600mph may also have a part to play. It probably also explains whey some of them have such a lacsidasical approach to life.
Why bother.
Manyana is a word most people associate with sombrero toting Mexicans who have found a comfortable place to sleep off the Tequila, but it applies here too. Not the Tequila, you understand - they do make it and drink it but call it Punta.
It´s just that sometimes, things don´t happen when they are supposed to - and sometimes things do when they are not.
Builders don´t turn up all over the world but here they are very fastidious about phoning you up to tell you they are on their way before not turning up. If a Banyan doesn´t know the way, they will give you comprehensive directions anyway and shrug off the complaint if you ever see them again.
And they spend far too long on festivals - one hundred and nintey days off a year for them, at the last count, each one with at least three competing thirty-two peice marching bands and a life-size icon of the saint in question trundled around the streets in a glass display case with armfuls of flowers and palm leaves.
There must be a large warehouse on the outskirts of town to store it all.
The drum section in every festival band plays at an entirely different rythm to the brass which wanders in and out of tune at will. I blame the altitude - but noone really minds as there is always something more interesting to do.
Like watching the man in the main square letting off rockets from his half finished beer bottle - which he is still holding and from which he nonchalantly sips between launches.
If the choice was between flaming boulders and fire-crackers?
I know which I would choose.
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