Equador, in Baños.

We're now sitting in an internet cafe in the city of Riobamba, and thought it was time to post another update on what we've been doing down here. We caught a bus in Quito to Baños, which is where we were when we wrote the last post. Baños is a beautiful little town in a valley surrounded by tall, green mountains, and a (recently active) volcano. The name baños means baths in Spanish- there are natural hotsprings around the town heated by the volcano. It's a haven for tourists both local and international, and it's a centre for tour and adventure companies, whose businesses line the streets and offer whitewater rafting, mountain biking, ATVing, trekking, and all kinds of other things. One of the latest things they have come up with is what they call "puenting"... puenta means bridge in Spanish, and what they do is attach a rope to the middle of a bridge over a deep canyon, of which there are many in the area, attach the rope to a harness, and jump off the bridge, free fall for a second or two, and then swing on the rope like a pendulum under the bridge. It's kind of like bungie jumping, except that the rope isn't elastic, except for a little bit on the end so your spine doesn't snap in half when the rope grabs the harness. Sounds like fun, hey? For our first outing in Baños, we rented mountain bikes and rode out of town along the carretera heading east, which runs along a spectacular canyon, making a few stops along the way. The first was a bridge, where I tried some puenting, which really got the adrenaline going.. we made a couple of stops to enjoy the view as well. Our eventual destination was a waterfall called the "Paillon del Diablo", which we hiked down to the bottom of from the road. It's an incredible sight- 100m high. There was a narrow space in the rocks below the waterfall that we climbed through, which places you directly under the falling water... an incredible experience. After that we hiked back up to a small village, and were looking for some dinner when we were approached by a woman who brought us to her front yard, where she had a makeshift store set up with a table and chairs (this is very common in Equador) and made us a great dinner, after which we jumped into the back of a pickup truck with our bikes and a couple of German tourists and hitched a ride back into town. We visited the town's most popular thermal baths that evening, called "La Piscinas de Virgen" (you'd be amazed at the kind of things that get named after the virgin Mary here!), which were crowded with locals, but great. We were lucky during our time in Baños to have a great hostel to unwind in, with a great rooftop patio filled with interesting characters to talk to, not to mention $1 bottles of beer! The next day, we hiked up the mountains to the south of the city.. it was a steep trail and a hot day, but a great hike.. and the lookout points along the way, and at the top of the mountains, were well worth it, with a view of the entire valley. We were exhausted, so another trip to the baths was definitely in order. The day after, we got up early and went to an agency where we had booked a whitewater rafting trip, where we were met by a couple of British guys who were staying at the same hostel we were, and two girls from Montreal. The six of us got into a van with a couple of guides and drove to the river outside of town, where after a brief tutorial we were quickly into some harrowing class IV rapids... an incredibly challenging, terrifying, and yet incredibly fun experience which I definitely want to try again back home. That evening we went out to a bar with our rafting crew and a few others from the hostel who tagged along. We had a fun evening and got to know some great people. The next day, we took it easy at the hostel in the morning.. one other great feature of the hostel we stayed at is the steam baths they have.. the bath consists of a combination of sitting in a wooden box pumped full of steam with just your head sticking out of a hole in the top, and being doused with ice-cold water in between.. a great way to wake up in the morning! Caroline could only handle one.. but I made it part of my daily routine! We took it pretty easy that day, we went out for a walk in the afternoon, and found a spa that offered $20 massages.. the perfect end to a action-filled week. We met up with our friends from the hostel one last time that evening, and headed off to the city of Tena, in the amazons, the next morning. As I write this, Caroline is sitting at the computer next to me writing a post about what we did after that.. we figured with the amount we had to cover we would both go at it at once! We're unfortunately not going to be able to post photos now, since the computers at this internet cafe keep having strange spanish virus alerts pop up every few minutes and we don't want to risk messing up the camera. We'll go to another place and upload some photos soon. Thanks for reading, hope everyone is well back home, and we'll try to keep the posts coming.

-Matt