Baños, Baños, Baños

What an action-packed weekend in the tourist city called Baños. Baños is located in yet another beautiful valley, and underneath a sometimes active volcano called Tungurahua. It's small streets are lined with restaurants, hostels, and tourist agencies, which make any sort of extreme sport that you could find in a mountainous region very easy to access. There is ziplining, bungee jumping, biking, cascading, and much more. IES Abroad doesn't allow us to advertise any extreme sport participation, but I can talk about the night we arrived and took a quick dip in the boiling hot springs that are found in built up resort pools around Baños. We stayed in a dormitory style hostel which was a great experience because we got to meet other travelers. Each person that stayed in our room was someone traveling alone through South America for many months. It is very inspiring to me, and a pleasure to hear there stories! One young man had previously lost everything when he got his backpack stolen on a bus in Colombia, and was in the trickiest situation I have ever heard regarding a credit card not working and an unresponsive credit card company, and an already purchased bus ticket leaving to Peru the next day. I wish him luck! 

Through a travel agency, we rode in a truck up a mountain side to the famous swing on the edge of the earth. It was honestly a little underwhelming because it was very cloudy and even rainy that day so we didn't have the view of the volcano. It was still a great time as we flew down the mountain roads and eventually ended the bike ride at different waterfalls. The last waterfall, Pailon del Diablo, was not the biggest waterfall I have ever seen, but perhaps the most powerful. The path allowed you to walk right up next to it and even behind it as the huge splashes sprayed up and soaked every passerby. Besides the adventures, there were delightful restaurants and some live music in the town. The whole semester when I asked people where to go they all said Baños, so I had high expectation, but each one was totally met.