Two weekends ago me and a group of friends from the program made our way to Baños, a city about 4 hours away from Quito by bus. Baños is known for their mineral hot springs generated by the local volcano. I came down with a fever the Friday before we left, but nevertheless I still went! With a bunch of tylenol in my pocket. We did a bunch of fun things. The Saturday we woke up to go on a 2 hour bike ride at 8:30am. It was raining the whole weekend we were in Baños, but the bike ride was still nice.
Afterwards we were picked up by a party bus, and were taken to the spot along one of the rivers where we would take off for rafting! It was class 3 and 4, and was a ton of fun minus being sick and stuck in the rain. Our guides were characters, and messed with us but it was all in good fun. We returned around 5 or so and rested, ate dinner, and went out to town. It is a pretty developed area, with many foreigners both traveling, visiting, and those who have opened up restaraunts or businesses in the area. I go to eat Thai food at a restaraunt owned by an Italian.
We took a canopy back and forth across a waterfall and the forest, kind of scary but still super cool!
We ended our trip on Sunday with a 2 hour horse back ride up one of the mountains.
My horse´s name was Lucero
Overall it was a fun experience being away from the program and traveling on our own. Next trip I plan on going to Esmereldas, a spot on the beach up north. It´s suppose to be gorgeous!
This past weekend the program took us all to Mindo, which I read is the best place to go zip-lining. It was an overall pretty mellow trip, which was nice just hanging out at the hostel which was situated in the forest alongside a river. It is owned by a guy named Jonathan who graduated from HSU a few years ago, and decided to buy the hostel to save his Ecuadorian family´s business. He´s been in Mindo, Ecuador for 6 months.
On the way to Mindo we stopped at a nice vista point of a crater in a volcano near Mitad del Mundo.
Here I am overlooking another vista point of the ¨cloud forest¨ as they call it, on our way to Mindo.
We went to a chocolate factory and were able to see how the seeds were processed to make chocolate and utimatley the candy they sell, plus brownies and hot chocolate.
The day of Saturday we went on a 4 hour hike through the forest and got to see about 4 or 5 waterfalls. We also took another canopy to get to the side of the forest where we hiked. Here we are on it!
Although it was 4 hours, mostly upward, it wasn´t as bad of a hike as I thought it would be. Being able to swim and everything made it much nicer too. But we were all starving when we got back to the hostel around 3!
The last thing we were able to do was go zip-lining! Only about 8 of us or so from the program went, it as only $15 to do it! Super cheap in comparison to when I did it in Costa Rica, although the experience was much cooler in Costa Rica. There was a bit more hiking involved, but it was amazing flying through the forest! We also saw a tucan! Probably can´t see him in this photo...
And finally here we all are in front of the hostel with Jonathan who is in the blue shirt.
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