This is by far the craziest and best day I’ve had yet, full of experiences you only get once in a lifetime. So Baños is a very touristy place and it was originally named for its thermal baths heated by volcanic springs or something to that effect. They are supplied by natural spring water and the locals love them (more about that later). There are also a great number of waterfalls (cascades) and travel agencies offering everything from jumping off bridges and cayoning to renting ATVs and horseback riding. It’s an excellent place to be. So in the morning around 0600 the residential roosters woke us up bright and early. The view from our room that morning was gorgeous. The city is quite small and lies in a valley surrounded by the Andes Mountains. A ver, that morning we ate our free breakfast and schemed on things we wanted to it. A lady came from one of the agencies to tell us about the different things they had to offer. A big group of us decided to go cayoning and then biking along a route with waterfalls. Cayoning essentially involves repelling down waterfalls and needless to say, it was awesome. The agency gave us all our equipment (wetsuits, jackets, helmets, harnesses, shoes), transport to the site, free pictures of us, and guides for only 25$/person. We all climbed up, like mountain goats along small paths to the top of these waterfalls. Then they gave us a brief demo on how to repel down the waterfall and then we just did it. It was pretty amazing. We went down two falls, and walked to another set of three more. One we went down like a waterslide and the last one was about 100 ft tall. It was just a drop down. After you went initially down you were just hanging in the air and lowering yourself down from the top. It was scary at first, but totally worth it. No one got hurt, but my shoes (The shoes they gave us were like converse shoes with very little grip) had two pretty large holes that originally were there and started out small, but were much bigger when I was finished. So we all signed up to go biking after the cayoning. The agency brought us our bikes and bags with our clothes to the spot where we walked to afterwards. We were all quite wet and cold at that point and it had started raining. We decided to trudge onward since we had already paid for the bike rental (5$ for the day, awesome price!). So they gave us our bags and we changed our clothes on the side of the street. That was definitely a new experience, especially because we were in bathing suits and trying to change into dry underwear and clothes. We were definitely roughing it by the time I had to find a bamboo patch to pee in.
So we then continued in the rain along the roadwith the other cars. There wasn’t a separate path for bikes so whenever a car wanted to pass you they would honk at you and speed passed you. Obviously it was a bit dangerous, but nevertheless exciting. Most of the ride was downhill. We got to see several waterfalls and stopped to watch these people jump off the bridge. I mean, they had harnesses and what not, it was a bridge swing. I was tempted to try it out (that and the zipline) but we were all ready to get out of the rain and eat lunch. A lot of the waterfalls also had paths or gondolas that you could take to get closer, but in the interest of filling our bellies and getting out of the rain, we skipped those parts.
At the end of the trail, there was a pickup truck ready to take our bikes and us back. We were all standing in the back of this sketch truck with our bikes and about 15 of us, with no seat belts. The truck driver was taking slick curves at like 50 mph and people were trying to pass us on the road. This dunebuggy (like a go-kart) even bumped up against the side of our truck. No damage done though. It made me think about how in the states I would have had to sign about 3 different waivers to even get myself in that situation. It was great.
A ver, that afternoon we got back dirty and tired and ready for food. We ate at this cool place called Casa Hood. They had a variety of different ethnic dishes. Oh and people have been saying that Chinese food in Ecuador is not the same as Chinese food in the states—but it is. (That’s for you Claire). I had some very delicious fish. And to open the door to leave the restaurant you had to pull on this plastic banana (Haha I thought it was sweet and unique).
After dinner we planned to go to the thermal baths. Unfortunately they were insanely crowded and everyone in our group decided to check out this recommended place with a Jacuzzi up in the mountains, El Café del Cielo. One of the guys in our group is good at speaking Spanish and haggling, so instead of taking a Taxi up there he asked this random truck driver, if he would take us up there. We would again sit in the back of a truck, with no seatbelts, at night, up a mountain, but it was only 5 dollars for all eight of us. That was definitely the cheapest part of our adventure up the mountain. We discovered that the Jacuzzi, did not cost 5$ per person to use, but more like 15$. The original cost was 20$, 15$ was our group discount. The manager was rather bothered by us and since we came all the way up there. We decided to just go with it. The view of Baños at night is pretty cool and we were high enough up in the mountains we were feeling the mist of clouds around us. The jacuzzi was definitely relaxing. It was connected to this 5 star resort place and it was fairly pricey for Ecuador. We ended up getting a taxi ride down the mountain back to our Hostel for the night. All in all it was an excellent day. The best day yet.
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