Banos

So I had a pretty action filled weekend. On Thursday I went to a Capoeria show at a club. Capoeria is a kind of martial arts/dance thing. For anyone who has played Tekken, its what Eddy Gordo does. To be honest, that's the only reason I went. The performers came from around the world, most of them were from Brazil though. The performance was very impressive with the exception of one guy who was dressed as a farmer and rapped terribly for 45 minutes.

On Friday my day started out in Andinismo where they had attached a rope from the top of the gym. Class consisted of us tying the correct knots and then climbing the rope to the top by using these knots to support us. It was pretty awesome. I decided to go to the town of Banos (Banos is spelled with a ~ over the n, but I don't know how to type that) with several of my friends that afternoon. We left our bus station close to our homes at 3. Unfortunately our bus passed through a pro-Correa demonstration, so we were considerably delayed. The bus had to go a different route, and we arrived at the Quito bus station almost 3 hours later. The actual bus to Banos was surprisingly very comfortable. It was the first time I actually had leg room in a bus in Ecuador. We arrived in Banos pretty late and found our hostel and ate dinner. The hostel was very nice, but not really secure. There were several times when nobody was inside to open the locked door for us, so on several occasions one of us jumped the fence to open the door.

On Saturday we rented bikes to go down "La Ruta de Cascadas" (Waterfall route) It went along an actual street but the scenery was amazing. True to its name, there were tons of waterfalls that you could see. There was a cable car that some of us took to get up close to one huge waterfall. From there we could climb on the rocks next to it, so that was a lot of fun. There was also a five year old girl operating the cable car on one side so that was kind of funny. After that excursion we continued biking until we got to a bridge. This bridge was the site of "puenting" (literally bridging). What puenting is though, is bungie jumping without a bounce and off of a bridge. You pretty much swing around after you jump off. Naturally I decided to do this. After I had my harness on and stood on top of the bridge and looked down, I figured it wasn't the best decision I could have made. The guy in charge was just saying "tranquilo, tranquilo" but I was terrified. Eventually I made the leap down. It was probably the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. It was awesome though. Apparently there was another place that is much higher but we didn't make it there. A couple of my friends also went puenting, so I now finally have a good response when someone asks me if I would jump off a bridge if my friends did.

After that adrenaline rush, we continued on to another waterfall called "Paillon del Diablo" or something like that. It was a huge waterfall and we were allowed to climb behind it in tiny passages. It was an incredible experience. After the waterfall, we took a bus back to Banos. We ate lunch really late and then I went dune buggying with some other people. We took these dune buggies down a road and went past the zoo. The zoo was labeled "animal prison" on the map so I thought that was pretty funny. We went through a tiny little town where we were chased by dogs so that was fairly exciting. We then went down another trail where we had great views of the river. When we got back to Banos, we got a little lost so we were just driving through traffic in these little dune buggies. We got back eventually though. Our dune buggy was pretty old and beat up though. They were literally fixing it right before we got to ride it.

That night we rented a bus to get a good view of the volcano. Unfortunately there was clouds so all we saw were clouds and fog. We did get canelazo which is a type of really good tea. It was possible to put in aguardiente, which is a really strong sugar cane alcohol. It literally means fire water. Somehow one of my friends ended up with a full cup of that, and it was not drinkable at all. On Sunday we went hiking. The mountain we climbed was really steep and the trail was slippery. The view at the top was great though. We then took the bus back to Quito.

Our group that hiked on Sunday

Our dune buggy

Swinging after puenting

Scariest moment of my life