Mountain Biking

Bloody hell. I was woke up at 5:30am by a marching band and what sounded like a cannon firing, over and over. It finally stopped after 6:00, and I fell back asleep.Up around 9:00, had breakfast, then met Jason at 10:00 am and rented mountain bikes. We biked from Baños east out of the mountains toward Puyo, on the edge of the Amazon basin. Awesome scenery, lots of waterfalls, including Pailon Del Diablo, an awesome thundering waterfall, where you can actually climb in behind the waterfall.Kirsty and me made it to the 40km mark (about 4:00pm), where the road then starts to climb. The seats on the bikes were terrible, and my ass was killing was me. Lisa and Jason decided to continue the uphill road to Puyo. Kirsty and me caught a truck back for $2 each.Kirsty and me waited for Lisa and Jason at the hostal, they got back about 7:00pm. They ended up paying $20 to get back from Puyo. They arrived in Puyo just before dark, and Lisa mentioned there was lots of police in Puyo, with riot gear ready (like those big shields). We had noticed a significant police presence in Baños today too, they're all over the place. We were curious as to why.The four of us went for gross burgers and beer, then we used Jason's Macbook to transfer pictures between memory cards. I put a copy of all my pictures onto Kirsty's memory card (which is actually mine, that I loaned her), and she's going to take them all back to Canada, so I have a backup.Around 6:00pm, while we were waiting for Lisa and Jason to get back, the band and cannon started up again. Kirsty was outside, and she came back to the hostal and remarked that it was firecrackers, not a cannon. It sure is loud, though. Obviously some sort of fiesta.