First Trip to Baños and Swinging at the End of the World

Let's just be reasonable...it's impossible to top the Galapagos...it's just never gonna happen...but in mid-January we did get to take another little trip with a big group of teachers to Baños.  Baños is a town about 3 hours from Quito (a bit longer on a bus) that we had heard lots of great things about.  It's known as a bit of an adventure town because you can hike, bike, zip line, horseback ride, whitewater raft, canopy, paraglide, bridge-jump....should I go on?  Baños also has (and is named for) several natural hot springs.  The town is settled at the base of a volcano and several wise business owners have established spas so that visitors can take advantage of the natural hot water after adventuring during the day. Our group had planned on a whitewater rafting excursion early Saturday morning.

We stayed at an adorable little hotel called Le Petite.  It was perfect for our large group because each room had several beds on the lower floor with a loft above to sleep a few more.  Javier and I shared our room with Keith and Mike, two lower school teachers from school.

you can see the loft style here - Javs and I claimed the downstairs bed!

Our room had its own fireplace (which I'm sure is nice sometimes, but since Baños is at a lower altitude, the nights didn't seem that chilly to us).  And truth be told, we didn't spend much time in the room at all.

We had a nondescript dinner in town after arriving pretty late on the bus and went to bed early for our rafting adventure the next day!  We had booked the trip with Imagine Ecuador and cannot say enough about how much we loved the guides.  They spoke perfect English (good for me!) and were the perfect amount of fun-loving and professional.  We even got a safety talk which was a bit surprising based on my other experiences in Ecuador.

here we are getting our safety chat before we enter the boats!

Javier and I were in the orange boat!  I'm the second blue helmet from the right (I'm the one working hard paddling us through this white water!)

Javier is now in the shot, he is the second blue helmet from the left (you can see his plaid swim trunks!)

I think this pic is seconds after the one above...we're getting crushed a bit by the water!

the amazing part to me, is that our group got all of these pictures FOR FREE!! (I'm second helmet from the right)  The company had a gentleman in a kayak keeping up with our group for safety purposes, but he was also snapping pictures as we went!  The company just told us to bring a thumb drive back to the shop after our trip to download all the pictures! (In the US I'm sure pictures would have been an additional $20 or something crazy like that!)

orange boat teamwork :)

here is our whole group at the end (we had over 20 teachers come from school)

The rafting was a ton of fun.  They told us we went through some 3 and 4 level rapids and plenty of folks fell out of the boats during some intense ones.  Okay....I was one of those folks.  But I think it all depended on your position in the boat.  They allowed one person to sit on the front (Titanic they called it...) and this person seemed to be guaranteed to be air-born on any rapids we hit.  Sure enough, seconds after I settled on the front, I found myself flying into the water.  Luckily it was a hot day and the cool dip felt nice!

In the afternoon, several in the group had booked massages or other treatments at the spas in town.  The rest of us decided to head up the hill to see the view from the swing at the end of the world.  We had heard about the swing from other expats at school and I in particular was very excited to see it!

our bus driver stopped at a great lookout on the way up - here we are looking down on Baños

beautiful view

It was starting to be dusk, but the light ended up being perfect for some pics!  Here is Javs swinging off the end of the world

no hands!

they actually have two swings set up so that you can swing with two different views (Baños is off to Javs' right)

I decided to let loose on this one a bit ;)

as I said, Baños is at the foot of a volcano, which you can sometimes see from town.  On the weekend that we went, it stayed pretty cloudy so we never got a view from the top, but you can see most of it in the background of this pic.

We also had two birthdays in the group and decided that cake before dinner was the perfect way to celebrate!  (Kim on the left is married to Larry who teaches physics at school.  Paulina on the right is in charge of our kiddos that need a little extra help at school.)

After dinner we went out for some drinks and were convinced that we had to try this traditional Baños shot.  It's layered in the colors of the Ecuadorian flag (how patriotic) and then lit on fire.  But for some reason it's called a Bob Marley.

Instead of blowing it out, they give you a straw to stick to the bottom so you can drink it while it flames (I look a bit unsure don't I).  We had heard it was horrible, and while it certainly isn't making my fav list....it also wasn't bad!

We had the whole morning of the next day to get into some shenanigans before heading back to Quito, so a group of us decided to head out with Imagine Ecuador again for a canyoning trip.  They offer two locations; our group opted for the one that was a bit farther out and less traveled by tourists.  Little did we know the course would require / allow (depending on how you look at it) for some waterfall jumping as much as waterfall repelling.  

here is our group all suited up and getting trained to repel!

This is Javier repelling down a waterfall after we had just JUMPED down a 12 foot waterfall (crazy hard to get the courage to jump PS...wish we had a pic, but it was difficult angle and everyone was more worried about not dying than taking pics)

After you repelled for a while, they told us just to JUMP and slide backwards down the rope - it was so fun! (This is Javier jumping)

Thats me at the bottom (I could tell cause of the shoes)  Just repelled down and am about to jump in!

sitting and hanging out while we wait for others to do their jumping

Canyoning was a TON of fun.  It also was pretty intense.  I found the repelling to be quite difficult (it took a lot of arm strength).  I honestly think I preferred the jumping.  It was terrifying to let go, but once you did - it was SUPER fun.  Either way, we all agreed that we were happy to have paid a bit extra and done the more remote trip.  Baños got a HUGE two thumbs up (as you can see in my pic) for the Cabezas.  We are already looking forward to going back and taking on some of the adventures that we missed out on this time.  Its a beautiful town with a ton to do.  It's only down side is the distance....Mindo offers a lot of the same adventure, but is only an hour away....regardless, I know we'll be headed back soon.  It's just too good to stay away from!