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Baños (bathroom in Spanish) is unsurprisingly known for it´s thermal baths and is situated below a volcano which didn´t long ago erupt. It´s the place to go to do any actitivity you like. Horse riding, bikes, quad bikes, bungy jumps... so we were definitely in for an active few days.
We arrived midafternoon, relieved to be out of Quito and to still have all our belongings with us. We celebrated with a nice cold beer and some food. We had been recommended a nice hostel so found a four bedroom with a little patio leading onto a garden, we just chose to ignore the cheesy smell and pretend we were in a hotel. We walked around the town for the afternoon, talked about what activities we wanted to do and then chilled out for the evening with a few drinks.
The following day we headed to a tour office opposite our hostel with the cutest little toddler called Carolina. She loved getting her head stuck anywhere she could! We hired four bikes, collected a packed lunch and set off for a mammouth bike ride of 60km. The first 10km went smoothly, we got over the first few wobbles and
were relived that most of the road was either flat or downhill.
After 10km we met our first highlight of the bike ride, although perhaps a little too late! Ahead of us lay a ´small´ tunnel and leading the way we rode straight into it thinking we´d soon be out the other side. We didn´t have lights on the bike, nor was the tunnel lit and trying to avoid cliches the light at the end of the tunnel just seemed to get further and further away! Suddenly a huge blaring horn of a bus and a couple of cars zoomed straight pass us. Let´s just say there were a few elbows scrapped alongside the wall of the tunnel, lots of screaming and then frantic pedalling to keep up with the vehicles to light our road. We were soon on the other side in such shock that we couldn´t stop laughing. It was actually quite terrifying but even now my stomach hurts from laughing just thinking about it. We certainly won´t be doing that again.
The bike ride continued for another 5km when suddenly a hissing noise started from Katie´s bike. A group of 8 kindly rode pass us
with one commenting ´that doesn´t sound good´(we weren´t impressed) and as we slowed down we soon saw a huge silver nail sticking out of Katie´s wheel. So again we had a short burst of hysterics and then sat down by the road pulling out our puncture repair kit. ´It´s ok, I´ve done this before´ I said, although really thinking, well, I´ve seen my Dad do this before. We stood the bike upside down, tried to remove the back wheel and well that´s as far as it went. Luckily we had an emergency number so we flagged down a tourist bus to borrow a phone (who then all wanted to take photos of us and our broken bike) and tried to make up the Spanish word for puncture. 45 mins later, our tour lady soon arrived with another bike.
So, keeping our fingers crossed that things don´t happen in threes we soon rode on to the next stop, a beautiful waterfall. As we walked to the entrance a whole babble of Ecuadorians started shouting my name,´Krystyna, Krystyna.´ I turned around and it happened to be the same tour group that had been on the bus we had flagged down. We
did chuckle! The waterfall was a good hour and a half trek both down and then back uphill and after 30km of riding our bums were sore and we were ready to go home so flagged a van to take us back to town.
It was an eventful day but with a couple hours of sunlight still left we decided to rent some buggies. They were two person buggies and were fit for road use. So learning how to use the accelerator and break, we set off for an hour. It wasn´t until Nick had guided up us a windy, narrow moutain path that we soon released we didn´t have a reverse gear and panic set in a bit about how far we would have to ride until we could turn around or how far the petrol would last. After another minor encounter with a bus we soon found a place to turn around and headed back to safety.
If we hadn´t had enough adventures already, the next day we decided to try a spot of white water rafting, Grade 4 this time! We set off at 9.30am with what seemed like a group of teenagers as our
tour guides, a little disconcerting but they soon got serious when they realised they had four giggly girls in their raft. ´You girls are the engine, I am only the driver´ he said, he clearly wasn´t impressed!
Anyway, we soon got going and the rapids were amazing! Only Alice fell out on the second rapid after the boat was stood in a vertical position on the rapid but apart from that we did pretty well. We stopped at one spot to jump off some rocks and then after 2 hours of rafting enjoyed a leisurely lunch. Well, it would have been leisurely if we hadn´t found chicken feet and other random parts in our soup (apparently traditional Ecuadorian food?!)
Rafting had officially exhausted us so the afternoon was spent sleeping and in the evening we headed into town with our white water raft instructors to a Salsa club.
The next day was spent at the thermal baths and for our last evening we decided to take a night tour to the Volcano. You get picked up at 9pm, get put on an open air bus and then get taken up to the Volcano. We had been warned
that there were two tours, one good and one crap but the lady we booked with promised it was the good one. Anyway, after stopping off at a less than spectacular view (just wait for the photos), a bad cup of tea and a babbling tour guide who had smoked so much weed that he actually couldn´t pronounce constanants we soon realised we were heading back down the mountain without a wisp of a volcano insight. Anyway, Alice unexpectedly had a bought of travel sickness so we chose to see the funny side and be grateful we weren´t heading to a live Volcano with our tour guide.
Baños was a great place to spend a few days and we certainly giggled a lot at our misadventures. We headed back to Quito for the weekend where we all set off on our seperate ways :O( Nick and Alice to the jungle, Katie back to Birmingham and me, off with my wellies to shovel monkey poo.
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