We are now on the last of our ten days in Baños, and I think we have done it all! Over the last four days since returning from the Jungle we hiked to the top of mountains surrounding the city to see the statue of the virgin, we para glided with amazing views of the volcano, we biked another 15 miles to Diablo falls, and we rented dune buggy's once again! Tomorrow we catch a bus back to the Capitol Quito to pick up our friend Jono and the airport and then we will head off to the Cotopaxi volcano! Also we have a new addition to our traveling two-some! When we were in the jungle one night eating dinner a girl from California overheard us talking about Hawaii, and asked if we knew the same people she was just visiting there. Low and behold we did, and we had actually met her on her visit to Hawaii a few months back. Her name is Alisha and we have hung out with her and done all of our activities with her ever since! She is also going to come with us for the next week or so of travel to Cotopaxi and to the beaches, so if nothing else Jono wont feel like a third wheel for his ENTIRE trip haha.
We had returned from the Jungle on a Friday afternoon and took a couple of days off to enjoy the carnival atmosphere that baños turns into on the weekends. Then on Sunday we decided it was time for some exercise so we started climbing up the thousand something steps that lead to the statue of the virgin that overlooks Baños from high above the city.
The views were amazing and the low oxygen workout was brutal but we made it, and we got up and down about 2 mins before the 70 year old couple that was also climbing it that day, we knew if they beat us we were going to have to lay off the french Fry's for a while :)
The next day was our new friend Alisha´s birthday so we had to do something special, and what better then Paragliding five thousand feet above the city! The ride was incredible, it was like skydiving in reverse, you catch a gust of wind on the top of a hill and you fly straight up a few thousand feet!!
We could see for miles and miles and we could even catch our first glimpse of the volcano that has been hiding behind the clouds ever since we arrived in Baños...The pilot took each one of us up for about 20 mins, Lynz got a bit longer of a ride because the wind died and the pilot could not safely get her back to where she took off from so he floated around for a while looking for a safe place to land, but I guess that's pretty normal.
The next day we rented some bikes and took off through town and along the mountain roads that are famous for their waterfalls. Along the route we fallow a deep canyon that has a raging river flowing through it and every couple of miles another river plunges over the edge of the canyon to join with the river below.
The ride was nice, but getting off the bikes every couple of miles to do the $1 cable car over the canyon and the waterfalls was incredible!
The cable cars stretched thousands of feet above the river below and some of them went directly over the waterfalls, it felt just like and incredibly unsafe version of Disneyland!
As we came to mile 15 of the bike ride we had arrived at our destination of Diablo falls. We had to park our bikes and walk down a trail for about 20 mins to find it, you could hear it well before you could see it. As we walked across an Indiana Jones style bridge that stretched across the river we got our first look at the waterfall....not so impressive.
But looking closer we could see people standing right next to the falls, and they looked like ants! We quickly realized we had underestimated the size of the falls, and we were just farther away then we thought. We found our way to a trail that took you right up next to the falls where some CRAZY Ecuadorians had constructed a series of look out points below, next to, above and BEHIND the falls. Now that we were spitting distance from the falls we understood where the falls got its name, there is no way someone could survive the pools below the falls, there were literally millions of gallons of water coming over the edge of the falls every minute.
The lookouts at the bottom of the falls were scary enough, but we soon found that there were tunnels built that if you climbed on your hands and knees for a few hundred feet, you could make your way Behind the waterfall!
So of course we started crawling
and after a few mins we were just feet from the falls, it was one of the loudest things I have ever heard.
The final 15 feet you had to dash under pouring water and then snap a quick picture before running back into the safety of the cave...quite the adrenaline rush!
Yesterday we were determined to take our new friend up to the tree house that we had found last week, so once again we rented our lean mean green machine dune buggy and charged up the mountain.
We took a few mins to swing out on the swing that goes over the valley and then headed to the only restaurant built into the cliffs overlooking Baños.
Casa Ruton has the most amazing view you have ever seen from a lunch table period.
The Carpaccio was delicious (and under $5!) and we sat there for the rest of the afternoon taking it in!
Tomorrow we will be getting back on the bus for another 5 hour bus ride back to Quito to pick up Jono at the Airport. The next three weeks are going to be incredibly packed...somehow even more so then they are now! We will try to do another blog in about four or five days when we arrive in Cotopaxi, until then we miss you all!!!
Sean & Lynz
You look constipated in most of your pictures :)
ReplyDelete~Noriel