the volcano

Hi there everyone
Well, we started off this morning hearing from a friend in a completely other city that Banos is on red alert for the volcano. I was dumbfounded as when I looked to the volcano there was nothing going on, no sound, no rumbling, nothing. Then about 2 hours later......THERE SHE BLOWS...... The rumbling is coming every 5-10 minutes. They had closed the roads coming into Banos, and people were getting edgy. The other side of the volcano, that points to Riobamba is where they evacuated people. We all made sure our bags were packed and ready to go in the hall way. They are still there now. Rachelle and I went to the city center to find out what was going on. There were first aid police, television crews and so on. Everywhere we went and asked how things were,... we heard the same thing NO pasa nada, vamos haber, tranquilo. It is hard to listen to when you hear and feel rumbling under your feet. We were fully prepared to leave and were wondering if we should hire a truck to exit stage right. But as it turns out.....no pasa nada horita. So life is ticking on again. The problems so far is that Guyaquil is choking with the cenisa (ash). So there we go, at this point there is nothing to worry about, right now. My neighbors have told me that the alert in Banos is really yellow alert and if there is a problem that they will ring the bell and let us know. So for now we are still here. It looks like that they opened the roads again, as there are busses passing the house again. These little Ecuadorian are hardy and resiliant people who are very flexible and not that easy to rile up. I understand thought that once they rile up, they can be quite the panicky people. Hopefully, we won't have to witness that ever. Anyway relax everyone we are fine and all is well here in Banos Ecuador.