So I've been in the town of Baños for a week now and am loving it. Laid back, full of activities and people, it's been a good base for exploring central Ecuador and taking Spanish lessons. That's right, after 3 months of speaking my travel Spanish, I've decided to hone my skills and figure out how to use grammar properly. Focusing on the past and future tenses, I've been taking 4 hours per day with a private teacher.
The days are spent out and about in the region. With a German friend, we biked the waterfall route along the river. A half day trip, you pass numerous huge waterfalls and often have the opportunity to zip line across the river, above the falls. At the end us the pailon de Diablo, a large waterfall you hike down to and then can hike under. In one section, you crawl through a tunnel just a few feet high to get to the next section. All this to get very wet and end at a rock wall where you can't go past.
Another day was rafting on the frothing river, super high from all the rain that has been occurring in South America. On the first rapid, our whole raft flipped. Guide, 3 girls and myself all into the water. Wasn't really our fault as we were going up a steep rapid behind a raft and they were stopped at the top. Simply, we ran into them and all flipped backwards down the rapid. Quite fun really and we were all back in the raft within a minute apart from Laura, who was picked up by another raft and had to dive into our raft.
And as with most places, I hiked to the highest point around. On some days the weather was rainy or cloudy, but on the hiking day, it was toasty and I got a proper sweat in, being rewarded with awesome views. Lots of green here in the mountains,as well as hot springs (hence the name of 'baths'). Nice to soak up some minerals after the days activities and brain power spent on Spanish.
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