My Adventure to Baños, Ecuador

This past weekend, I visited the town of Baños, Ecuador. It`s known as the "gateway to the Amazon," and for good reason. It`s, well, literally on the edge of the jungle. And its a pretty fricken sweet place. Although its really touristy, its got a lot of character. There`s this really cool colonial church in the center of town and tons of great little family owned restaurants. I ate a great breakfast for 2 bucks that included fresh juice, a pancake, a coffee, and this sweet rice stuff. Super good deal.


The courtyard of the colonial spanish church
The inside of the colonial spanish church

Baños is about 3 hours away from Quito. The bus ride over on Friday night was pretty uneventful, as was my first night there. I quickly discovered the vast amount of activities you could do: White water rafting, (class 4), jungle tours, horse back riding, rapelling down waterfalls, ATVing, hiking, mountain biking, swimming, natural hot springs, and more. So, the first night there, my friend and I decided we were going white water rafting. So on Saturday, we went. We got a deal with this one Ecuadorian dude named Juan Carlos. he sold us the trip for 2o bucks, including gear rental, roundtrip transportation, and lunch.
Chillin with a friend during orientation

Once we got through orientation, we went to the river. The views were unbelievable. The river literally runs through the jungle. We heard exotic bird calls and saw some snakes in the river. I was literally waiting for Indiana Jones to pop out of the temple of doom. The rapids were pretty fierce, and my buddy pushed me out of the raft about a 100 meters away from a class 4 rapid. Luckily, I paid attention during orientation and was able to get back to the boat relatively quickly. Once the rafting was over, we ate lunch on the river. I had the best river trout i´ve ever eaten in my entire life. We drank this weird looking red juice that was super good. It was possibly one of the best meals i´ve eaten so far.

Rafting on the river


That night, we decided to do this thing called "chivas." Its this party bus that takes you to the top of a mountain that overlooks the town. Baños became a holy site for Colonial spanish catholics when the Virgin Mary magically appeared in a waterfall. So they built this big cross on top of the mountain. Then some people modified the cross and now it glows, exuding rays of gods glory across the sky. Que lindo.
The Holy waterfall where the Virgin Mary appeared. The giant glowing cross is located on the top of the waterfall, on top of the mountain. The cross overlooks the entire town of Baños

So, in an interesting way, the local economy has benefited in numerous ways from this holy appearance of the Vigin Mary: Thousands of religious folk flock to Baños to pray under the cross while drunk American tourists party their brains out at the same time on the Chivas party bus. Hey, I got really drunk for 3 bucks. Not a bad deal.
The Chivas bus. It was the same bus that took us to the river for rafting and to the mountain for partying

Anywho, that was my weekend to Baños. Twas a lot of fun. Hope you had as much fun reading this as I did experiencing it. Tune in for more adventures!!