Banos

ABOUT BAÑOS:
Nestled in the shadow of the fiery Tungurahua volcano is the exquisite town of Baños. Tungurahua is one of Ecuador's largest active volcanoes and provides an incredible backdrop to treks and explorations in the area. There are some beautiful waterfalls, excellent trekking, and mountain biking opportunities, and some famous volcanic hot springs which give the town its name!

4/9/19
Don’t think I’m ever going to have a sleep in on this trip, alarm set for 6:30 to finish packing, for breakfast at 7:00, to leave by 7:30. While eating our plantain, fried egg, and some fruits, we were told our minivan was going to be late as a bus had tipped over on the only way out. Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait too long, and we had been told no-one had been hurt, we began walking to our minivans at 8:15. We just missed our ideal local bus at 9 am, so we had to wait until the next one at 10 am.

Today’s bus drive was shorter than usual, and we arrived at 1:30, after checking in, we had free time while in Baños. Most of us went to have lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and I had a burrito. Baños is the adventure capital of Ecuador, so afterward, Kym, Ally, Tamara, Paulie, and I went to organise our activities for the next day.

With our activities planned, we caught a local bus to the famous “swing at the end of the world.” It was a very overcast day and made the swing very eerie and looked like you were swinging into nothing. We returned to go to the hot springs in the afternoon. We were required to hire these awful bathings caps, all that was missing was our synchronised swimming routine! One of the pools was closed, so everyone was crammed into the one pool, so it wasn’t the nicest experience. There was one other pool, which was extremely hot, we went into this pool for as long as we could, but left to get dinner

(Spaghetti bolognese) on the walk back to the hotel.

5/9/19
I went to asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow last night, to the point that I didn’t even get to set the alarm. I woke up just in time to be the last one to breakfast; guess what, it’s scrambled eggs, fruits, juice, and a croissant. Yesterday afternoon, Kym, Tamara, Paulie, and I decided to do cannoying, so we headed over to their office for 9 am to be kitted up into our wetsuits, helmets, and shoes and a short drive to the start location. We had two brothers, who were both excellent and full of positive, fun energy and I felt very safe with them. Once we got back to the town, lunch was provided, very good value for USD$30!

While waiting for our afternoon activity, ziplining, we had a cerveza with the other from the group, who after hearing we were Ziplining decided to join us. Ziplining was really good fun, especially, now that we had such a big group to enjoy it with! There was a total of 6 zip lines, I did two upside down, two in the superman position, and two regularly.

We all regrouped in town to have a group dinner at the Lepricorn pub, where I had a perfectly cooked Surf and Turf. They had all night happy hour for us, 2 for 1 cocktails, which was the start of a big night! We played a little pool after dinner and then moved to the Lepricorn club, down the road, where we were greeted with a free flaming shot. We sat around talking for a little while, while they played local music until they started Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, etc. and we were all dancing like idiots on the dance floor. We quickly learned that Baños has similar laws to the lookout law of Aus. The music stop mid-song at exactly 1:50, and everyone kicked out with the place closed by 2:00.