Baños: ¡Vale la Pena!

My adrenaline is on steroids right now.

Friday morning we got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the bus station. We found out an “express” bus was leaving for Baños at 7:35am and we got there at 7:30, so we were quite the sight of grigas sprinting through the station with our bags. But we made it! And let me tell you it was definitely not an express bus… we stopped any time there was a person on the side of the road to see if they wanted to go to Baños… but for $3.50 you can’t complain.

We checked into a Hostel ($6.50/ night) and headed “downtown” (Baños is super small) to find activities for the first day.

Most of the group (11 chicas) decided on horseback riding through the Andes, while myself and three others went for cannoning. Cannoning is when you propel down waterfalls in a wet suit and a harness. After a few smaller ones we got to the grandisomo… I’ll put some pictures up because words cannot do it justice. We made friends with a cute Ecudoarian couple who encouraged us along the way (SI se puedes! You can do it!)

When we got back to our hostel we changed into suits and headed over to the hot baths, this is where Baños gets its name. The springs are naturally heated by thermal springs coming from the base of Volcan Tungurahua which Banos sits at the base of.

That night we ate a Casa Hood, an amazing little restaurant, started by Ron Hood , a guy from Michigan who fell in love with an Ecuadorian (he started Café Hood with her), when they got divorced he married another Ecuadorian and started this restaurant, interesting guy, super nice and AMAZING food! We even got authentic, delicious mojitos, 2 for 1!

Day 2:

We got up around 7; hit the market for an amazing HUGE breakfast with REAL coffee (a rarity here) all for $2. We planned our day out the day before so when were done with breakfast our 11 bikes were awaiting us. We were quite the parade in Baños; 11 gringas riding through town in a line at 8am.

Stop one on our bike tour: A ridiculously high bridge over a roaring river wedged between two mountains. What do we do here…? Jump. Clearly, what else would you do on a bridge like that…

The day before when we decided on bridge jumping we thought that it would not be as high and you could go with a partner… nope… solo, solo. So with a harness on… I attached my life to one single rope and jumped hundreds of feet… “Vale la Pena” (it’s worth it) soon became our motto… It truly was an indescribable feeling of just free falling, tumbling through the air, until the rope yanks you back to reality with a bit of whip lash and then you swing for a while, observing a roaring river with waterfalls cascading down the cliffs with the back drop of the Andes… Vale la pena.

So after the experience of a life time (it was only 9:30am) we got back on our bikes for a curvy 20 some km bike ride through the Andes on a busy mountain road, occasionally stopping at waterfalls. I was riding next to my friend Becky commenting on the surrealism of this trip when all of sudden our bike handles locked and our bikes flipped over each other… THANK goodness no bus or truck was behind us because we were tangled in a mess of bikes in the middle of this mountain highway… also THANK goodness for my helmet (yet mom I was wearing my helmet) because that hit the ground first. I only ended up with some scratched up hands and a big nasty scrap across my shoulder, but I’m so thankful that it was just this, because it could have been much worse!

After stopping at some more BEAUTIFUL waterfalls, taking a cable car across a cannon, hiking a bit, we stopped at a small restaurant for a very authentic lunch. Then the people we rented our bikes from came and picked up the bikes and took us to our next destination: White water rafting.

White water rafting:

I can’t remember the name of the river, but I know that it flows into the Amazon. We suited up into wet suits in the pouring rain, got some quick instructions and hit the river. There were 3 boats; 2 for all of us and 1 full of some Germans, each boat had to create a team motto and when our guide said grita we had to scream as loud as we could and slap our paddles on the water, of course my boat chose “vale la pena!” Not long after getting through the first patch of rapids, we were cruising next to the other boat and the guide grabbed me out of my boat and threw me into their boat... he was a little crazy… he eventually ended up pushing everyone into the river at some point…

Again words cannot capture how amazing rafting was and unfortunately I have no pictures of it but just picture one of those moving pictures they sell in the malls with cascading waterfalls down the side of a cliff, with mountains surrounding it… and this is where we were... at times I felt like a was on set of Jurassic park or Lord of the rings…

We ended the day with going and soaking in the hot baths again… the perfect end to a perfect day.