Baños.

Dear friends and family, I'm about to tell you about the craziest weekend of my life.  I thought ziplining and tubing was insane.....

On Friday afternoon, 9 of my awesome friends and I met up at the bus terminal in South Quito where buses to Baños depart.  To get to this terminal took all of an hour in the electric Trole bus, so that was already an ordeal in itself.  We bought our tickets - $3,50 for the 4-hour bus ride to Baños got settled.  We left a little before 5 so it was dark right away and we didn't get to see anything.

We arrived late and settled into our hostel, which was a walking distance from the bus station.  Within 10 minutes of arriving we ran into our other friends staying in town this weekend too.  Our hostel was adorable - 4 floors with nice clean rooms, hot water, and comfy bunk beds.  And towels.  We went out to dinner then explored the nightlife... Baños is known for its partying and sure enough the streets were packed and filled with music and excitement.  We stayed out late then walked home and crashed.

Early in the next morning, we got ready, had breakfast on the top floor (facing the beautiful mountains and waterfall), then set out to our first activity:  riding horses through the mountains!  All nine of us got a horse and followed a guide through town, then through some paths, weaving through the paths.  I was so preoccupied with the fact that I was on a horse that the first half hour I could not focus on the amazing sights.  The horse was totally fine but listened to the guide more than me so that was a little worrisome.  Another girl's horse was kind of ornery and even kicked my horse in the side, narrowly missing me!  So I was a little on edge.  We then decided to go by the waterfall path and got on this steep narrow path leading to the waterfall!  Karl, my horse, did not like this and kept hesitating and freaking out.  We made it eventually and on the way back I finally figured out what I was doing so I felt a lot better.  I talked to the guide in Spanish, telling him to stop making me force to go faster cause it was freaking me out, and he just laughed and asked me if I drank coffee - I said yes and he proceeded to tell me that's why I'm so nervous all the time.

Anyway, we came back, had lunch and went to our next activity - puenting!

Everyone's been freaking out when I tell them about this particular activity.  Puenting means strapping yourself to a harness and a rope and jumping off a bridge.  It's not a bungee cord so there's not spring when you reach the end, but the rope is hooked to the other side of the bridge so you fall and swing right away.  I heard about this a few weeks ago and knew I wouldn't let myself not do it.  So lo and behold on Saturday I'm trying to get the others to do it with me!

We get to the bridge and everyone just freaks out.  It was HIGH and WINDY and suddenly seeing someone just free-fall from a platform seemed so unnatural and unnerving!  Well obviously.  So we all freak out a little, take pictures, and before we know we are strapped up.  My friends Lauren and Brein decided to do it too, while the others climbed to the bottom and watched and took pictures.  The bridge was like, 300 feet high, and of course I put my feet on that platform and all I could think is - humans are not meant to do stupid things like this!  And that it'd be impossible to convince my mind to throw myself into nothing!  So I decided to just not think at all and when the harness guy yelled "salta" I JUMPED and it was the scariest thing I've ever experienced in my life!!!!!!!!!!!!  I keep shivering just thinking about it.... you're just... falling and I closed my eyes and though I jumped with my arms out of course I was immediately clutching the rope and screaming my lungs out.  When the rope reached the end, it jerked a little but nothing horrible.  I opened my eyes and couldn't believe I was hanging under bridge, swinging like crazy.....but I was so happy.  They let down the rope and I joined my friends who were sitting there.  The other girls had already gone and we just mostly screamed and freaked out and what we had done.  Absolutely no regrets!! I knew I had to do this once in my life :)

I honestly would have had enough adrenaline for the weekend, but we had already signed up to do canyoning.  We hop in the back of another truck and head to the waterfalls, where we are all given wet wetsuits and wet Keds and a helmet and harness and prepare to repel down some waterfalls.  This was something different... this looked hard... you actually had to focus and get it right (unlike throwing yourself off a bridge).  So we all tried the first one and the guide laughed and told us we were all horrible so we couldn't actually do legit repelling and instead he'd be doing all the work.  Which was fine with me.  So on the next one we did some sliding and on the final one, we repelled a little, then basically threw ourselves backwards again off the edge - a 100 foot drop -  and he just let the rope drop - in other words, let US drop.  We'd drop in about 20 feet increments, and this too was just terrifying.  Right at the end, when I thought he was gonna let us land somehow carefully or gracefully, I, in HORROR, realize this is not happening as I get dropped onto a giant rock, being thrown from one side to another, smashing my hip and hitting my head.  Luckily my helmet stopped any brain damage from occurring but I have a pretty nice purple bruise on my hip now.  Disoriented I join the 2 last guys who were waiting for me, because as we discover there is not stairs or a nice path to get back up, just an impossible climb, trying to pull yourself up by roots, literally crawling in the dirt up the side of this mountain.  So they helped me up in the beginning and we all made our way back.  We had the chance to do that last fall again and I just laughed - you can call me many things but I'm not dumb enough to let the guy who DROPPED me down a waterfall do it again.  Luckily and unluckily, my friend Ally got something in her eye earlier and couldn't get it out so she was pretty hysterical and crying, so I stuck with her and tried to make her feel better.

After this, we headed back, brought Ally to the emergency clinic where she got the piece of sand removed, and we headed back and took warm showers, changed and headed to dinner.  We ate quickly because at 9 we were getting on a chiva, a party bus, and headed to the top of one of the mountains to see if we could see any volcanic activity.  We met a really nice guy and girl on the chiva from Guyaquil and we hung out with them for the rest of the night... we'd been drinking a little so our Spanish was incredible, go figure.  But we really hit it off, so it was awesome!  Of course it was really cloudy so there was nothing to be seen around the volcano but the city lights were beautiful from up there and we had a good time.  We got back in the chivas later and headed back out to the bars.  I ended up coming back to the hostel at 4:30 am....

Then at 8am, opened my eyes, tried to move, and seriously felt like I'd been hit by a bus.  I forgot to mention this whole time that I've had a cold all weekend; it was pretty mild for a while but on Saturday night it flared up a little.  By the end of the night I'd completely lost my voice.  So Sunday morning, every muscle was sore from riding horses, repelling down waterfalls, dancing for hours, being slightly hungover, and from coughing and having my head feel completely inflated around my sinuses.  Very pleasant.  Oh and sleeping for 3 hours.

Somehow I took a DayQuil, drank some herbal tea at breakfast and made it through the rest of the day.  We split up - Julie, Ally, Alli, and I took another chiva ride, this time touring waterfalls outside of Baños.  It was a beautiful warm sunny day so that was perfect.  The others decided to rent some bikes and did the same route with a lot more effort.  They had bought our bus tickets beforehand but we didn't know for what time.  When we finish with our tours, we grab a bite to eat, and try to call them to get an ETA.  After lots of unanswered calls, we find out the tickets are for 3:30 - it was 3 - they were just leaving their last waterfall.  We try not to panic about this but if we miss that bus we lose money and may not get another for several more hours.  Fast-forward to 3:30 - Julie and I frantically calling the others while begginggg the bus driver not to leave... workers from the terminal yelling at us that the bus has to go, us yelling back desperately that they are close, they are running.  Our dumb friends weren't exactly running, even though we called 3 times absolutely screaming at them.  The bus pulled out on to the street, stopped again, and finally after delaying for about 10 minutes almost of of our friends come up.  Unfortunately one of them came back into town and his bike broke, so he didn't see where everyone else went and has a terrible sense of direction.  So Tim and Joe stayed behind and caught the next bus while everyone else jumped on this one.  All of our friends from the other group were on this bus too so it was a fun trip back.  I didn't talk obviously - but we laughed and eventually everyone fell asleep for a bit.  4 hours later, we get to Quito, take another hour on another train, and then I come home to my host family, who loves hearing my stories.  Unfortunately my host mom needed quite a bit of convincing that me being hoarse does not require a doctor visit, but I think she's good now.  She had saved dinner for me - rice and shrimp - and I told her my stories.

Then I came upstairs and here I am.  So many pictures are already uploaded to facebook - I'll be downloading for days.  Video of puenting is coming.  Otherwise I'm tired and sick and should probably get some rest.  In 4 days I'm headed to the rain forest for another field trip - this one university-lead.  Should be incredibleeeeeee.

Alrighty, so that's it for me.  Hope you enjoyed reading about how insane my life has apparently become.  I was never the daredevil or the brave one so this is hilarious to me.

Looooove, Cyn