Tuesday 7 november

We started the day by having a last lovely breakfast in the community hostel. While we were waiting on the taxi, someone told me he just had an accident and his car was wrecked. okay.. So we went outside and took a taxi to the bus terminal south of Quito. We got on a very nice bus with TV screen and since we had front seats, we had alot of foot space🙄 Not bad for 4,50 dollar per person. It was a 4 hour drive but the time went very fast while writing my blog and enjoying the view.

We arrived in Baños around 16:00. Baños is at 1850 meters above sea level and is surrounded by mountains, which one of them is a vulcano. The village is pretty much based around tourism. After checking in the hostel we went to some touring companies to see what we could do the next few days. There were a lot of options like mountainbiking, quad rental, canyoning, rafting etc.
In the evening we had dinner at the restaurant of the "erupcion hostel". There was nice Latin music playing and we played a card game before the food came. Nicole had chicken and I heard the trout in Baños was good, so I choose that. It was great!

The next morning we went to the touring company "Alexander tour" in front of our hostel and rented 2 mountainbikes for 10 dollar total. The guy who worked there was really friendly and gave us alot of information.
Around Baños are a lot of waterfalls, so we were gonna do the waterfall route: you drive down the road from Baños about 18km, mostly down or straight ahead. During the ride there are some waterfalls to visit and a lot of adventure stuffor like: zipline, bridge swing, shooting catapult bowl etc.
So we started our route with our bikes and after 7km we reached our first stop: a waterfall on the other side of the canyon. There was a zipline across the canyon which we couldn't miss😊 We decided to do the "superman" position for zipline. There were two lines, so we could start next to each others. We only hang on one line above the high canyon, what a feeling. Pure adventure with a view on the beautiful waterfall! For the retour way we choose the gondola to enjoy the view on the waterfall better, sinice it was slow.. right? But huh, we had to hold the railing when the gondola started, it was going so fast! Not much time to enjoy the view in peace lol
Our next stop was another waterfall on the other side of the canyon. So we walked down and crossed the river by a swinging bridge. The view from here was amazing. Once we got close to the pretty high waterfall, we already felt the dusting water in the air. So we continued our way only in our underwear. The closer we got, the more dusty and windy it was. A few meters next to the waterfall we had to stop because it was to hard. The waterfall blew cold water in our faces! Insane how strong it was! We enjoyed the view and we were the only ones there.
As we walked up the canyon, the sun was shining and we were not the only ones there: a green, one meter long snake relaxed on the way but disappeared as we came along.
After the waterfall shower we continued our way and I had my second facing with an animal: a bee flew under my helmet and stung me in my head😑 Gladfully my personal nurse squeesed the poison out of my head and we continued our way to the most famous spot: Pailon del Diabolo! A really huge canyon, you can go there from two sides down some stairs. We were facinated by the beauty of it so we visited both sides. We got really close to the waterfall by stairs, bridges and crawl through a small cave. It was really worth the effort, but unfortunately also for other tourists...

Our last stop was the Machay Waterfall. We walked down a lot of stairs again to a see a high waterfall with nice rainbows in the waterdust. It was time again to continue in our underwear to get to the waterfall.
For the 4th and last time we climbed up the stairs to the road and drove back to Pailon del Diabolo. From there you can ride back to Baños by truck for 2 dollar each.
Back in Baños we felt our tired legs and took a relaxing bath in the hotsprings with natural yellow water.

In the evening I invited Nicole to dinner because she took so good care of me when I was sick. We went to the Swiss Bistro and enjoyed red wine, currycream soup and a tomato Käsefondue. Yes, cheesfondue in Ecuador 😍
After that we could barely walk and it was time for a good sleep, tomorrow there's adventure coming up.

Thursday 9 February
We woke up early and had breakfast in our hostel. We needed a good breakfast because today we are going to go RAFTING!! Rafting is where you go with a rubber boat down the fast floating river with rocks sticking out. I did rafting last December in Thailand, but that wasn't so special since the river was calm. At 09:00 we went to Alexander tours where the minivan picked us up.
After 40 minutes we arrived at the starting site and we got instructions about rafting and all the commandos we had to know like: front paddling, back paddling, Fast right paddling, inside, positions!! We were getting drilled by our tour guide "Papucho". He selected me as the front right captain and Matt (USA) as front left captain. We had a lot of fun already and after we introduced ourselves in the team, we made up a cheer "Papuchoo, Oeh! Oeh! Oeh!".

Fully motivated we carried our boat to the water and started rowing.
We came to the first rapid and oh shit this was going to be way more intense then we expected. Papucho was screaming from the back of the boat FAST PEDDLE FORWAAAAARD! We made it through the first rapid but then all of the sudden he screamed INSIDE!!!! Before we knew it, the boat flipped over and we were thrown out. When I came above water I saw that Matt was in big trouble. He was suffocating because he got stuck with his helmet between the boat and the rope leading around it. Fortunately I was close by and could release him from this terrible position. The boat was still flipped over and we were going through fast rapids, I couldn't see Nicole anywhere and there was a bit of panic. Gladly one of the other tourguides helped flipping the boat back and they pulled me inside. Nicole got rescued by another boat. Gladly everyone was ok. Lilly (USA) cried and Matt was still shaking from adrenaline, but we had to continue. Damn.. we were only 5 minutes on the way, if everything was going to be like this..

We got better at our coordination so the rowing went better. We headed through the next rapids and didn't fell out anymore. But man, this river is powerful. Water was splashing in our faces and we got thrown to the right and left, so much adrenaline! We made it through the last rapid and after a last cheer we carried the boat out of the water. Wow, this was way better then expected.
We had alot of fun with the team and had lunch together.

When we got back in Baños we switched to the Santa Cruz hostel, since the other one was boring and expensive. After checking in we went to a spa were we got a full body package for 35 dollar each. No Asia prices anymore.
Later in the afternoon we went to Alexander tours to pick up our videos and photos from the rafting, 25 dollar for the tour with lunch and pictures was really worth it.
In the evening we met up with our group again and had some drinks🍻

10 February
We woke up a bit later and Nicole was still a little bit hung over from yesterday😜 We first picked up our laundry at Alexander tours and asked him how to get to Casa del arbol by feet. This place is at 2600m and has the swing to "the end of the world", it's very famous. Just after lunchtime I hiked up there, while Nicole still chilled a bit in the hostel and was going to come later. The hike up there was really nice, I finally feel fit again and I missed doing this! After 2.5 hours I arrived there, oh yeah this was very touristic. After eating some corn with cheese I went to the parking lot to see if Nicole was there. I saw her walking with 2 helmets, whoop! She came all the way up the mountain with a quad ☺
We walked up to the place where the swings were, but it was so crowded that we didn't want to stand in line. The quad rent was 20 dollar per hour so yeah. After enjoying the sun and the view we headed back down the mountain on the quad. I never really drove one so it was a cool experience. Nicole also drove for a while and I was scared as hell😂 I don't like it when I don't have any control. She's a good driver though 😶
In the evening we bought some stuff in the supermarket and made our own burrito's filled with egg, cheese, avocado and salad.

The next morning we woke up early and wanted to go to Quito by bus. We bought a Bus ticket and went to the bus. Nicole wasn't feeling good at all at this moment. She was sick and had stomach problems. When the bus took off, she realised she couldn't do it. So after 5 meter bus driving I told the driver to stop and we got off the bus again😅 I felt bad for Nicole, we are getting sick to often lately! While Nicole relaxed a bit at the bus station, I went to a nearby hostel and got us a privat room for 16 dollar per night. When we got there, Nicole went to bed and I went hiking up the mountain on the other side of town.
The hiking was great, especially the view on town was awesome. I didn't see any other person going up and with some music in my ears it was an awesome feeling. I went up to 2500M and then headed back.

When i got back I went to Geo tours and they told me the "big" canyoning tour was going on tomorrow. Nicole was feeling a bit better so I booked the tour. After that, I went to the supermarket and bought some fruits, yoghurt, muesli and ingredients for burrito's. Nicole wasn't so hungry but I was so I started cooking right away. I made burrito's again with a curry flavour to it 👌
In the evening we chilled in our room and watched a movie.

12 February
Finally, today we could do our preferred "big" canyoning with a minimum of 4 people, our group today counted 9 people.
At 9 we met at Geo tours to get our stuff and then directly headed to the river. Once there we got some instructions about canyoning. How to safely jump in the water, how to absail etc. The first jump was very small, less than one meter. We had to stay backwards to the river and lay back, the guide holded on to our harness and then kicked us in the water, one by one.
The second spot was a 3m jump at a nice waterfall. After that we already reached the highlight: a 7-10m jump down a waterfall. Surprisingly, everyone did the jump. They told us where to jump in the pool and once we landed in the pool they threw a "rescue rope" to pull us out of the (whirl)pool.
After that we did zipline and absailing down on 2 pretty big waterfalls.
When we almost reached the end, we did two smaller jumps about 2-3m and walked back to our minivan. Canyoning is nice!

Once back in Baños, we were tired and did a powernap... We didn't had a lot of energy left. I went to a barber to get my hairs cut and Nicole did some shopping for our movie night later. Before that we went for dinner to a vegetarian restaurant to have nice burritos. We watched the comedy movie "central intelligence", but due to bad wifi we only made it to the half of the film hehe.

13 February
We ate some muesli and fruits as breakfast, which we bought from the supermarket. After checking out we got on the bus to Quito. The bus drive was easy again while writing my blog and playing roller coaster tycoon on my laptop🤓. We checked in at the Secret Garden Hostel, since there was a good travel agency. We got a lot of good information from the people there about the Galapagos islands. We booked 5 days on a cruise, where we are going to visit the north-western part of Galapagos. We also got some extra days to do things by ourselves. In the evening we ate chicken fajita's at the hostel and went to bed early.

The next morning we woke up early and took a taxi to the airport, Galapagos here we come 😍🌋🏝🌎

Geschreven door FrankArends