Baños

Cotopaxi - Our view as we drove to Baños

The weekend of March 6-8 I went to Baños with my friends Marlene, Laura, and Jake. It ended up being a great group of people because we were all open to just about anything. We left Friday afternoon and it was about a 3 hour bus ride (which in Ecuador means it cost $3, I love this country). When we got to Baños we were all starving so we hustled over to the hostel we were planning on staying at. It is called Hostal Chiminea and is really new and super nice. We got a 6 person room to ourselves.

Once we threw our stuff down we went to go find somewhere to eat. A bunch of us had been craving Mexican food, so when we found a restraunt called Pancho Villa, we decided to give it a shot. Pancho Villas is now one of my favortie places in all of Ecuador. They had the best nachos I think I have ever had (although I'm sure the hunger helped). I still think about and crave these nachos. After that we were all feeling pretty lazy so instead of going out to a bar we just wandered around looking at all the shops. Baños is a big tourist destination and is known for its outdoor adventure activities. There were a bunch of guys from various tour places on the street yelling at passeresby to come check out their information. At first we ignored them but then we realized we had vague plans but no concrete way of doing them. So we stopped at one of the tour places and talked to the guy.

After some debate here is the schedule we worked out: Saturday - 8am go on a bike ride, get back eat lunch, 3:30 - horseback ride, get back eat dinner, 9pm - volcano tour, Sunday - at first the plan was to go bungee jumping but then instead we decided to go canyoning which was the same price and would last more than 3 seconds (more about what conyoning is later).

BIKE RIDE

Jake, Laura, and Marlene

The bike ride took us along essentially the side of a high way (which was exciting) and brought us to a bunch of waterfalls in the region. The idea is bike out and catch a bus back. It was a lot of fun and there were some exciting moments. One was when we had to bike through a tunnel. It was pitch black you could not see anything and I was pretty sure I was going to bike into a wall. Had we been smarter we would have walked our bikes through the tunnel but then we would have missed the adventure. For all the other tunnels there were alternative routes which brought us along a cobblestone road around as opposed to under the section of mountain. The bikes did not have the greatest seats, which, combined with the cobblestone roads, resulted in rather sore behinds. In all we biked 13 miles although it did not feel that long. We had some stops along the way to admire waterfalls and be ridiculous.

Once the bike ride was over we had a bit of an adventure getting back to Baños. They told us there would be buses going back to Baños, but none of the buses that went by at first looked like they could take four bikes. It is also rather hard to hitch a ride when you have four bikes. Eventually a tour in a Chiva (open air bus) said they would bring us back if we wanted to join their waterfall stop. So after biking 13 miles we hiked down (and I mean fairly straight down) and then back up from a waterfall. It was a cool waterfall and we got a ride back to Baños. The one problem with our extra pit astop was it cut into relaxing time between bikes and horses.
Me riding like the wind
(or posing while waiting for a bus to take us home)

HORSEBACK RIDING

Me and my lovely horse

For this stage of the adventure we were joined by Bailey and her mom and Angela and her friend visitng from BU. This meant we were a pretty big group. The ride was fun. Because we were such aa big group all we did was walk, which was still fun. The horses we were riding were seriously bomb proof. Cars drove by right next to us, dogs chased us barking, and they barely batted an eye. The ride was really pretty and coming back we got to see the sunset. Good Times.

VOLCANO TOUR

Bonfire and you can sort of see the
lights of Baños in the baackground

We were all pretty tired from our day and so none of us were sure we still wanted to go, but we decided to give it a shot. It ended up being pretty chill so that worked out well. We took a Chiva up part of the mountain across the valley from the volcano Tungurahua. Once we got out of the city we got to climb up and ride on top of the bus which was a lot of fun. There is a little railed in section with benches. The reason we had to wait until we got out of the town was it is a little illegal (but fun). Once we got to our final destination we had te de canela (cinnamon tea) and made a bonfire. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to get a good look at the volcano, but it was still fun.

CANYONING

Me canyoning

So canyoning is essentially repeling down a waterfall (awesome right). For this adventure it was back to the original foursome plus we were joined by this random guy Ben who had been planning on canyoning with a different group, but they had backed out because they were too hung over. Ben was a great adition to the group as he was hott, interesting, and nice. We got all our gear and drove to our starting point in the back of a pickup truck (we had the option of riding in the front, but that is much less fun). We got wet suited up and learned the basics of what to do to not fall down the waterfall. Our guide Alex was a ridiculous person. I will leave it at that. Then we hiked up to the top of the hill/mountain so we could canyon down the waterfalls. It was incredible and less scary than I thought it would be. I think I actually have a new hobby. We conyoned down 4 waterfalls of increasing length and then the last shorter waterfall we got to slide down like it was a water slide. I think canyoning was the high light of a great trip.

Our Canyoning Group (Ben is on the far left)

Tiputini Photo Gallery

I am going to change things up a bit.  Instead of giving you a long detailed acount of what we did in the rainforest, I am going to tell the story through pictures, which is more interesting.  

  

  Me enjoying the first boat ride

 

Resting up for our adventure

         

Chiva (open air bus)

      

  

2nd Boat

      

 

Pictures of the rain forest from the 2nd boat ride

 

Anaconda   

 

Turantula

Our guide Ramiro

 

One of the Towers we climbed to get

into the canopy

Big 'ole tree

 

 

View from the top of the tower

  

Bull ant (trust me it was big)

 

Plants growing on plants

If you look at the top left corner you

can see a hummingbird flying away

 

   Murcielagos (bats)

   

Canopy Bridges - Emma and Ramiro

 

In the canopy

We got to climb higher

  

View from the top

View of the canopy bridge 

(and Justin)from the ground

   

Canopy bridges=good times

Hiking through the jungle

 

We got wet and muddy

  

    Varrying stages of gorgeous jungle sunrise

  

Cool bird, this picture was taken 

through a telescope

    Stairs leading up to the tower

Bird, I think it was a tanager

 

Wolly monkeys

  

Awesome flower

 

    Hiking through mangroves

  

Eating some jungle fruit

Spider Monkey video

I hope this wasn't too many pictures for you.  I will try to get back on top of my blogging.