I fought the shower...

...and I WON!


Being in El Cristal for so long I was seriously jonesing for a nice hot shower. I was hoping to get one in my brief stop at Picalqui, but the water was down at the Hacienda again. After arriving in Quito I made my way back to Old Town and while in route to the Hostal I stayed at before spotted an advertisement in a hostal window that caught my eye. Private rooms with bathrooms, Hot Showers, Kitchen, Free Internet, and Free Coffee and Tea - all for the bargain price of $6 a night. I was sold at Hot Shower, however this proved to be one of those instances where my irrational optimism overrode my logic that for $6 bucks it´s very likely to be a tepid shower at best.


After my evening of errands I stripped down and was ready for my long awaited shower. A turn of the handle created a sputter of ice cold water that burst forth from every side of the shower head but down. I turned the handle a bit more each way to see if anything changed...nothing. I´m in a $6 a night hostal so I figure repairs are not likely to be instant or very good. Not wanting to be denied the shower I was longing for I decide to go MacGyver and fix it myself.
















In my birthday suit and armed with a small safety pin and my trusty 2¨ swiss army pocket knife I took on the electric Automatica Relajacion shower head. After removing the plastic sprayer cap it was quickly obvious that the holes were all clogged or melted shut due to the cheap plastic construction. I could see where someone had tried to fix it before by applying a bead of silicone around the circumfrence, but that obvuisly wasn´t working. I turned the shower on with out the sprayer cap and got a nice hot stream of water so I knew that at worst, the hot stream would do.

I cleaned the holes that were clogged with the safety pin and cut open the rest. After a good rinse I replaced the sprayer cap and Voila! My hot shower was on, complete with a happy dance and song!