One month? No me digas

Back to Quito after a fun weekend in Baños! Baños is a small touristy town surrounded by mountains about 4 hours south (on bus that is, it would probably only be 2 hours by car) known for its waterfalls and adventure sports. 10 of us from IES went on Friday afternoon. We went out to the bars that night after hamburguesas for dinner.
Saturday morning we sadly woke up to rain. Our plan had been to rent bikes and spend the day visiting the waterfalls, but raincoats or not it would be a miserable cold ride. One of the tour companies offered an alternative - a chiva ride on the waterfall route. Chivas are big open trucks with bench seats for passengers. The ride cost 4 dollars and most importantly we would be dry. We drove along this road that winds in and out of the mountains and overlooks different rivers. It stopped at 6 waterfalls in all, some of which you could only see from across the valley and others we literally drove through. The waterfalls were really beautiful and kind of scary- churning brown water crashing into the river. The last fall we hiked down to the very bottom where we got soaked by the spray.

The highlight of our chiva ride was when we stopped at a bridge where people were standing and looking at the river below - and at the people jumping off the side! Our driver told us they would wait for whomever wanted to jump, so obviously I was game. Basically we put harnesses and helmets on, strapped some heavy duty ropes to the harnesses and jumped off the edge. It was more of a fall than a jump, a one-second free-fall before you started swinging over the river. It was AWESOME. I was so pumped watching other people do it, and a little scared but not as much as I though I would be. I have no sense of how many feet the bridge was but it was HIGH, such an adrenaline rush! The pouring rain only added to the fun. At the bottom, after swinging to a stop and getting back on land my legs were shaking like crazy. One of the guys that pulled me in asked if I was nervous..well, yea, I just jumped off a bridge dude. It was so worth waiting in the rain, I would do it again in an instant. I'll try to upload the video but third-world internet isn't the most efficient...[Mom/Dad, it's ok, I'm alive, aren't you glad I tell you things after I do them?=)]

When we finally got back from our waterfall visits the sun was coming out but we were too tired to sign up for a rafting trip or anything at all ambitious so we just walked around the town and watched people making taffy from sugar cane. That night after dinner we went on another chiva ride, this one to the top of a mountain where you can supposedly see the active volcano on a clear night. Unfortunately we were in the middle of a cloud and couldn't see very far so we just enjoyed the bonfire and this fire-juggling show.
Sunday morning after breakfast we headed back to Quito, I actually had a decent amount of homework and reading to do for today. Ready for Month #2!