ADVENTURES in Baños

So, we spent the last week in a town called Baños. It´s named after the thermal baths (baños) that are there. We did visit the baths once, but were sorta grossed out by the enormous number of people that were in them that we decided to pass. In Baños there are also endless adventure activities to take part in.... we took part in our fare share...First, we went for a mountain bike ride from Baños toward a town called Puyo. Total trip is 61km. We didn´t go the whole way though, about half. There are some 13 waterfalls along this road that although we did see, we didn´t photograph all. . you´re kind over it by number 8, although they were beautiful.
A major rush was the bridge swing jumping. Yes that´s me standing on the top of a 35 meter bridge looking down at nothing but sharp rocks and freezing water. The guy kept saying ¨puedes, vamos¨ (you can do it, let´s go). Swing jumping was something that I really wanted to do, but I really watned to watch someone do it first. The guy had no business when we rode by and said that he would make his assistant do it first but it would cost me $15 instead of $10. SO... I though what the heck, there are pictures of this all over town, it must be safe... I made Jesse check out all the equiptment then suited up and climbed to the top. . .knees shaking and damp eyes I dove head first off this bridge. You have to dive head first because the rope is attached to the other side of the bridge and in order to fall gracefully you do a beautiful summersalt in the air before being caught by the rope and swining over the river while the harness rides up your crotch. It was amazing!!!!! (We don´t have an upside down picture of me cause we took a video! (I´ll show it off when we get home). . .we do have an upside down picture of Jesse though!!
He wasn´t going to do it, but after seeing that I made it down alive, thought ¨what the heck, if my wife can do it, so can I¨ (He didn´t hesitate nearly as long as me though..) I tell myself it´s becuase he actually got to see someone go first, although I´m pretty sure he´s just braver. After I jumped there were tourists lining up to do the same. I should have asked the guy to let me do it for free, I did bring him a bunch of business!!

Jesse got jealous of the many waterfalls along the way and decided to make one of his own!

The mouth of the Amazon. The bike ride truely was picturesc.

Not having seen enough waterfalls, we decided to repel down five of them. It´s called canyoning and it was super fun. . .and freezing.

Jesse showing off. . . he really could have guided the whole thing. I think he spent most of the time thinking of how he could set up something similar in Northern California...he loved it!!

I didn´t do so bad either.

(Like the yellow diaper thingy. It kept my behind nice and protected.)

Here we are at the end. Soaking wet and ready for our next adventure.

This picture doesn´t really have to do with Adventures, but it´s a picture of the common area in our hostal. I LOVED our hostal. It was $8.50 per night per person. It had this great firepit area outside that was always clean, well lit, and warm, and it had a communal kitchen! I could get up whenever I wanted and have my coffee!!! This made for AMAZING morning routines (for those that know what I mean =))
This is me loving the fact that I am going to have broccolli for dinner. We made a yummy spagehtti with delicious broccolli.
We also went for a hike!! It was long, steep, and beautiful. I was happy for the exercise and thrilled for the view!

I thought that this was super cool, I hope you do too. Look at these ants, they´re so strong. We passed a long line of them on our hike.One other ¨ adventurous¨ thing we did was take a night ¨chiva¨ (basically a flat bed truck with a roof and bench seats, no sides and painted really colorful) ride up a really steep hill to watch the volcano in hopes of it spitting out some fire. Unfortunately it was sooooo cloudy that I could barely see the person next to me, so as you can guess, we didn´t see any lava. It was fun to share the experience though. (Although, once again, I was freezing).
Please save some Chico sun for me.

Oh yes, and we played on the children´s playground. I think we teater-totered for almost an hour!

One more note: we really were gonna go white water rafting, I didn´t chicken out, but.. they canceled our trip the morning of becuase there weren´t enough people. So, we´ll have to go when we get home as soon as the rivers are ready!!