BAÑOS (Day 3)

Welcome back! So I'm finally finishing up this Baños blog which should have happened the first week of February (oops). Thanks for staying with me.

Day 3:
Wake up. Pack up. Eat up. Walk up to the agents office one last time for the final part of our package deal: puenting. We had all been anxiously waiting for this ever since we heard about what there is to do in Baños and it was finally time. With all of our bags ready to go home afterwards, we walked to the famous San Francisco bridge which was about 10 minutes away. Three of our friends came with us who had already puented the day before for support and to join in on the excitement of it all. This bridge is still in use, with cars passing through, but that doesn't stop the crowds of people from wanting to stand on the sides to watch the jumpers.

Once we were all there, they asked us who wanted to go first. Lorene, who was the most nervous and specifically told us to make sure she didn't bail, decided that she wanted to go first. We watched as she stepped in to her harness and stepped up on to the little ledge hanging off of the bridge, overlooking the beautiful river that ran through the canyon.

 

 

 

The crowd of people stood there with us, just waiting for her to jump! I guess I should explain what puenting is before I go any farther. Puenting is very similar to bungee jumping except that instead of falling straight down and springing back up and down a few times, puenting is when you jump out and then swing when you hit the end of the line. YEEHAW!

Okay, back to Lorene. She was the cutest little thing standing up there. It was a pretty windy day so that made standing on the ledge even more intimidating. Her hands were sealed over her mouth just staring out into open, trying to gain the confidence to jump. I think all of us watching probably screamed as loud as she did as she fell and then was pulled under the bridge. We all ran back and forth across the bridge, waiting to see her pop out from underneath on either side, laughing and screaming.

Nicole went second, Elizabeth third, Hilary fourth and finally it was my turn.

 

 

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous, but I think that after watching the other four successfully throw themselves off of the bridge, I was more excited than anything. Ever since I watched the video of my cousin Kayla bungee jumping years ago, it's been on my bucket list. Well, the time was here and I watched as my little feet walked to the wooden edge...

I don't know if I can describe what I was thinking when I was standing up there other than telling myself that I need to actually go through with it the second I start moving in that direction so I didn't lose my head. I remember trying to keep my eyes open but I don't think I did. The head-first-free-fall was incredible and the tightening of the rope did take me a little by surprise but wasn't as straining as I had pictured it to be. Once I was sitting upright and swinging hundreds of feet above the river, I looked up at everyone peeking their teeny heads over the bridge waving their hands at me. Adrenaline rush to the max! It all happened so fast and then it was over. After swinging back and forth a few times, the rope started to lower me down the canyon to where a man was standing on the side to pull me back onto land.

 

The strange thing about doing these things here compared to in the US is that 1) it's a lot less expensive and 2) no one asks that you sign a waiver. Everyone just goes with the flow of things. Would I do puenting again? Yes I would. My neck was a little sore the next day but was worth it. We all survived the crazy weekend and we all did it together - making it even better and more memorable.

The day didn't quite stop there.

The last three of us to leave bought our bus tickets back to Quito. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that we had assigned seats. Instead of sitting two of us on one side and the other with a stranger, we decided to take the very back seat that had five seats in a row. We were the first ones on the bus, but it didn't take long for us to realize that we had mad a HUGE mistake. The next couple that got on the bus walked back to where we were and looked really confused. They asked us what seats we had so we handed them our tickets because we had no clue. Of course we were in their seats, but they assured us that it was fine and that they would just take ours. What we didn't think of is that the switcharoo would still leave one of our seats open. As more and more people started getting on the bus, the confusion only got worse and they started pointing fingers that always ended up at us three gringas in the back seat. I tried to get the original couple to just switch with us but at that point, they didn't want to move since they were already situated. Eventually everyone sat down somewhere and the bus finally started moving. Ten minutes into the bus ride, one of the men in charge started going up and down the walk way checking tickets and seat numbers. Sure enough, this caused another riot and everyone hated everyone. The man tried to get the 50 people to move to their original seats but everyone refused. I guess that means it worked out okay in the end? I don't know. Regardless, we learned our lesson and have been sitting in our assigned seats ever since.

Baños weekend turned out to be one of my favorite weekends here and we are planning on going back for the weekend of Hilary's birthday! I can't wait. There is still so many things that we didn't get to do while we were there. (To mi familia, when you guys come down I am taking you there.) We'll see how much we can knock out next time. :)

P.S.
If you'd like, you can watch my friends' puenting videos here:

Lorene

Nicole

 

Elizabeth

Hilary

BAÑOS (Day 2)

DAY 2:
Saturday morning we all work up to eat breakfast before meeting with the agent lady at 9 to begin our adventurous day. The hostel that we stayed at provided breakfast on the roof which we thoroughly enjoyed. At 9 we made our way down to the main entrance of the door where we were told to wait for this lady. It was raining, pouring really, but we figured since the activities planned for the day involved getting soaked in water anyways that it didn't matter.

After waiting for about 10 minutes (still getting use to Ecuador time) a man on a peddle bike showed up in front of us. "Good morning! Is this everyone?" Umm, yes, but where is Carla? He assured us that he was there on behalf of Carla and that we were to follow him to the bus that would drop us off at our first stop. With a little hesitation, we did end up following him about a block down where the bus was sitting... well kind of a bus.

We were the only five there and we were told that a group would be going with us so we started getting a little nervous. We sat in the very back of the colorful, open bus on the little wooden benches and waited. A few minutes later  some 10 other people did hop on board, thank goodness. The man explained to us that we would drive for about half an hour until our group was to get off at the white water rafting site. As the bus pulled out, the music came on and we were having a party. The rain was blowing in on us, the music was blaring and we were bouncing all over the place on the rough roads. So basically, we were pretty much just along for the ride without the best idea of what we had planned for the day.

We made it! The package deal wasn't a lie. :) The five of us jumped off and marveled at the view of the river we would be going down. From where we were standing, we could see for miles overlooking the windy rivers surrounded by trees. We waited for our guide to get all of our wet suits ready, but while we were waiting, another guide made us pure sugar can to drink right in front of us. It was pretty tasty if I do say so myself.

Our guides told us to load up into the little truck so that they could take us down to the river; we crammed in the cab while our guides sat in the back with all of the equipment. We made it to the river and then were all given wet suits, helmets and life jackets to put on. We went over a few rules, learned the commands, blew up the raft with a little air pump, and hopped in! Another group was pulling in as we were leaving. They were all older guys, three rafts worth of them, and they ended up going down right behind us. Our guide, Pato, was very energetic and obviously loved his job. Hilary and Elizabeth had never gone rafting before so they were a little nervous about hitting the rapids. Of course they were the two that Pato assigned to sit in the front but they handled it pretty well. They didn't act that nervous until he said, "we are going to flip on this next one". Pato just laughed at how their eyes popped out of their head when they turned back to look at him and told us to keep paddling. We survived without falling in the water...not that it really mattered at this point because we were all soaked from the splashing anyways.

 

 

Once we made it to a slower part of the river, Pato ad his other gang of friends started to get a little crazy and wanted to show off in front of us. First the guide from the other raft stood up on the sides acting like he was king. All it took was one rock and he was in the river. The worst part is that when he was trying to pull himself back up into the raft, he made it but his pants didn't; everyone saw his bare bottom. Pobrecito! (poor thing) we couldn't stop laughing. Next was Pato's turn to stand on the sides. He didn't need a rock to knock him in though. Eventually the guys in the other raft started a splashing war with us and Pato ended up throwing us in the river too. The water actually felt pretty nice once we were in.

 

Well that concludes the morning of Day 2. Pato took us to a restaurant for lunch that was also included in the package deal, and then we were taken to the office where we found Carla. She informed us that ext would be the canyoning adventure. We couldn't have mentally prepared ourselves for this if we tried. Repelling down waterfalls is an awesome thought, but terrifying when it's actually happening. Our guide (I can't remember his name), was tiny but really nice. With our little shoes that could have been bought from Dollar General, and our helmets and wet suits once again, we hopped into another truck and off we went to the waterfalls.

 



 



 Four waterfalls were waiting for our scared little souls. Lorene was the first to lower herself down the slippery slope. It made me even more nervous just watching this all happen because the guide had no control when he was teaching us. Granted the first waterfall was a smaller one to practice on, we were still 100% responsible for what we were doing. The rope was looped through our harness with out anything to hold it from coming undone except for our hands. Every once and a while we would slip with our little wet shoes and would smash into the rock wall; bloody hands alert.

The second waterfall was handled a little different than the first. This time, Nicole was the lucky one to go first. Instead being told to loop the ropes as we did before like we were expecting, our guide clipped us on our back loop. The next set of instructions was to sit down at the top of the waterfall...we all stared at each other with horribly confused looks on our faces. Haha, well Nicole listened and we just watched as she took a slide down the waterfall, right in the middle of it. (Our guide was lowering us down, we didn't really just slide off.) After watching this whole ordeal, I was excited to go next, but I am glad that I wasn't first. So here's what it looked like:

Then it looked like this:

And my reaction was like:

Waterfall number three was even more scary. From where we were standing, all we could see was to the edge of the waterfall and the super steep valley in the distance. We were panicking, praying that we wouldn't slip on this one and fall to our death (honestly, that is what I was thinking). One thing that I didn't explain is that to repel down you have to lean back pretty far, pushing off of the rock with your feet and then trust the little rope to hold all of your weight; this goes against every instinct in your body and is a little freaky. It turns out that the waterfall wasn't the whole way down like we had originally thought. There was a little ledge where we would hook up for the final part. As I was taking my turn, Nicole, who was waiting to go last, and I heard Elizabeth scream. When I made it to the ledge, I walked over to where my guide was .That's when I understood why she screamed.

"Just step off." Are you CRAZY?! This tiny little man is telling me to step off of this cliff and free fall to the bottom until he decides to stop me with the ropes? Seriously, it just kept getting more and more scary...but we all did it anyways. I'm really horrible with guessing how high it was so I hope you can tell from this picture: (Hilary is standing at the bottom in her orange helmet on the rock pile in front of the waterfall.)

 

 

Our guide hooked me up safely (yay!) and down I went, screaming.

 



I have never experienced that much of an adrenaline rush in my life! Honestly, that was my favorite part of the entire canyoning experience. Would I do it again? Umm, no lol, probably not. I will say that I am glad that I did it though. Our guide successfully taught us how to repel down waterfalls. We were all excited to have completed the challenge and so we took a victory picture.

Originally we were supposed to fit puenting in on this day too but by the time we finished up at the waterfalls, it was already late. Instead, we decided to go the next day but you'll have to wait a little longer for that post :)

See you next time!

BAÑOS (Day 1)

First of all, I would like to thank my mom and dad for my adventurous side. As nervous as it makes them now, I am thankful that I have parents like them who are always trying to make the best of every situation and who take advantage of opportunities. I debated on weather or not I should mention to them what all I was thinking about doing while I was in Baños, but eventually I did tell them...it was a mistake (sorry). When I came back that Sunday and skyped with them, they were happy to see me alive and well. Not only did Dad tell me that Mom had been worrying all weekend, but I also received this in an email the next morning:

"Obviously We are concerned with you down there making big decisions that could affect your life forever so all I can ask is think before you go with your freedom instincts. :)   I want you to spread your wings but do it smartly. :)  I support what you do so have fun. Always keep your head about whats going on and don't depend on someone else cause usually someone else falls short of doing what you thought they would!   Ok  enough of that.  Mom obviously is worried and wants you back in one piece.  :) ME Tooo"

As you can see, this weekend brought the daredevil out of me for reasons that I am going to blame on my skydiving/scuba diving parents. Hah! Well, here it goes...

When a group of us decided we wanted to go, we met up at the mall to plan our weekend trip. This involved some time on the Internet, searching for our hostel, calling people about prices and times, and deciding what all we wanted to do. For the most part, everything seemed to be worked out and we were ready to go!

DAY 1:
Friday morning, the five of us met at the bus station early in the morning to get to Baños early that afternoon. Our hostel was perfect, once again, for $8.50 a night/person. Once we checked in we grabbed some pizza and set out for our first planned adventure: zip lining.

Our guides harnessed us up, gave us us our gloves and helmets, and then started describing to us what we would be doing. The map showed four different lines that we would be zipping down, each getting a little longer...over the trees, through the valleys and over the rivers. It was BEAUTIFUL! I wish I would have been able to take my camera with me to show you guys what it looked like from the line, but instead we were able to give it to the guides who took pictures of us coming in.

 

 

On the very last line, I was the first to go down and watch every one fly along the river. Nicole came after me and seemed to be going a little slower than she should have been. Sure enough, she got stuck probably 20 feet away from the platform, hundreds of feet above the ground. At this point, she would have been pretty helpless if it wasnt for the guide with the long rope to pull her in. I'm assuming this happens often because he didn't really think anything of it, unlike Nicole who was happy to finally touch the wooden platform; the same thing happened to Lorene. The hike back to the top was a bit exhausting, but I will say the ride was definitely worth it!

After zip lining, we headed back to the hostel to change into our bathing suits to go to the hot springs! The five of us, (the girl you guys probably don't recognize is Lorene, she's from California), were all looking forward to chillaxin' in the warm water until our two other friends arrived to Baños to grab dinner. We got to the hot springs and learned that we had to buy/wear plastic shower caps if we wanted to get in. Boo! They're ugly...and so we didn't take pictures :x. Anyways, we bought the lovely hair holders and were ready to run from the dressing room to the pools because at this point, it was a little chilly out and we were seeing a little too many guys in speedos.

There were about five different pools to choose from and so we chose the natural, brown water one. The five of us got in the luke-warm water and laughed at each other for a while in our shower caps. So were we chillaxin' in the warm water? Yes, until two six-ish year old girls JUMPED into the pool and splashed us all. Excuse me, those shower caps aren't doing anything when they're filled with water, chicas.We sat there and watched these girls swim in tiny little circles in front of us, jumping in and out of the spring...we moved to the crowded, clear water pool and managed to laugh at the whole situation.

Once we made it back to the hotel, a woman greeted us and asked what our plans were for the weekend. We told her we were wanting to go rafting and puenting for sure and that we were trying to fit it in that next day. She smiled at us and said, "You can do rafting, canyoning and puenting all tomorrow for $60." We all kinda looked at each other for a moment before we started asking her who she is and if its a scam. (Hah, we really did tell her that we thought she might be scamming us.) She assured us that she was an agent and that it was her job to sell the package deals. Instead of answering right away, we told her we would let her know in a few minutes. After talking to the people at the front desk, we decided to go for it and pay her the money.

While taking turns getting our showers, our other two friends, Tori and Lauren, made it to the hostel and were ready to get something to eat. A friend that was here last semester suggested that we go to a restaurant called Casa Hood while we were there, and so we did. I'm really glad that she suggested that because it was so good we ended up going back the next night too. Mmm, Roy's Chocolate Shake! <3

After dinner, we were hoping to be able to take the volcano tour on the chiva (party bus with music and dancing), but we got there late and there wasn't enough room. That's okay though because the volcano wasn't erupting at the time so we wouldn't have been able to really see anything anyways. Instead we went out dancing for a little bit and then made it back to our hostel where we just hung out for the night and discussed what all we wanted to do/were expecting for the next day. Hah, just wait to see what it consisted of! :)

DÍA DE AMOR Y AMISTED

Happy (very) late Valentine's Day everyone! Valentine's Day is celebrated down here too but they seem to celebrate friendships just as much as the lovely dovey relationships, which I think is so cute. Along the roads they sell beautiful flowers, all the girls were carrying around roses, people were eating chocolates and friends were getting together just to be together.

Initially, our plan for the 14th was to get together with a few of our best girl friends, eat chocolate, drink some wine and watch girly movies like The Wedding Planner and Magic Mike hey ya. This plan, however, ended up changing when Mama Paty informed us that we were going to have a church service in our house that evening with family friends and that there would be a dinner afterwards.

The morning of Valentine's Day, Papa Galo and Mama Paty greeted me with a box of chocolates at breakfast. In return, Nicole and I decided to buy them some flowers on our way home from school because 1.) they deserve it and 2.) it was 30 years of them knowing each other! aww <3

When we got home from school, the living room was rearranged and everything was in order for the service at seven. Mama Paty had been cleaning since I left that morning for class; the alter looked beautiful.

Pretty soon people started coming in to the house, all dressed up and happy to be there. They brought little gifts and Nicole and I were able to meet everyone.  From what I understand, this has been happening for a few years now on Valentine's Day. Mama Paty was so happy that we were able to be there which made me happy because of how important it was to her.

Everyone was given a bulletin before the service started so that we were able to follow along. with there being so many people there, Nicole, Pablo, Mae, Tata and I had to sit in the dining room while everyone else was in the living room, but that was probably for the best. When it was time to sing the songs, Nicole and I were butchering the tune/pronunciation of the words that we didn't necessarily know the meanings of. Pablo and Mae found it amusing but we were really trying!

After the service, it was time for dinner which consisted of  hot wine, a tortilla wrap and a really sweet cake of some sort. We were able to talk with some of the others that were invited, including two nuns. Actually, we probably talked to them the most that whole night. They were very interested in why we were here. :)

The little celebration went on for a few hours and it was a really good time. People were taking pictures, laughing, telling stories, and enjoying all the company.

 

This Valentine's Day, or Día de Amor y Amisted was different than any other Valentine's Day that I've ever experienced and it was fantastic. The love and friendship there that night was evident. Happy 30 years to you, Mama Paty and Papa Galo. We love you!

WITCHES AND NEW FRIENDS

Daniel Bryan is very serious about experiencing Quito, learning about the history and meeting new people. This is why he is our director. It has to take so much time planning and organizing to be able to provide our little BCA group with such great experiences. A few weekends ago, he had planned a Saturday and a Sunday day-trip for us.

Saturday was our trip back to El Centro Histórico but this time, it was a tour at night. Before we were all to meet, a few of my friends decided to get together and plan our Baños trip (that weekend's post to come soon!). It turns out that we should have left from planning earlier than we did because we were just getting off of the bus when it was time to be there. Once we finally found what road we needed to follow, we started sprinting uphill to make it to the center where everyone was to meet. When I saw uphill, I mean uphill; we were about to fall over as we were weaving in and out of all the people trying to sell us lottery tickets and candy. Daniel told us that if we weren't there on time, we would miss the first whole half of the tour so we were praying that they didn't leave yet. Luckily, we made it in time with a few minutes left to catch our breath.  

Two tour guides met us and at the center and told us to follow them. We walked toward a huge church, and just as we were about to enter through the doors, a small woman dressed in a purple and black laced dress with a black veil, holding a broom, walked in in front of us. We ended up following her to the courtyard where she stopped and stood in front of a big fountain with her back to us. She started singing some type of song and we started wondering if we should leave and let her do her thing but we didn't. It wasn't until she turned around with her clown mask on and started talking to us that we realized she was there to give us the tour. Yikes!

Everyone followed her through the archways to a room covered in gold with creepy paintings involving Jesus, angels and demons. She started talking about how this was the room where they signed their declaration of independence from Spain. It turns out that those who signed it were killed and buried under where we were standing. I'm pretty sure she said there were some 300 bodies. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but I did sneak one and that is why the picture below is blurry. You can see the wooden gate in the ground that covers up the tunnel where the bodies are buried.

After the scary stories, we continued to the museum section where many paintings and sculptures were of Jesus and Mary. Some of them were disturbing including the room that was dedicated to one life-size sculpture of Jesus laying on a chair after he had the nails through his hands and was beaten. It was a little graphic for my liking, but we all were to sit around it, leaving me no other choice but to stare at it. Honestly, I can't remember paying very close attention to this part of the tour very well and I regret that now. I think the story was something about how years ago there were people in that room and something spooky happened - like a ghost story - but I don't know. :x

There was one more tour that we were led to and getting there was rather interesting to say the least. First of all, our gringo mob walked through the street like this, drawing even more attention to ourselves...

We stopped in the very center to play a few games and it was a lot of fun; eventually we accumulated a crowd of Ecuadorians who probably wanted to join, but they just watched instead. That's when I noticed that we had a few police officers watching us too who I guess were walking with us? I felt like I was famous with the bodyguards. Anyways, before walking to our final tour the witch lady (tried) to teach us this chant about being in purgatory... I mean we tried but it was a little long and it just sounded like a bunch of mumbling except for a few random words. She then told us to keep chanting it as we walked through streets. Please picture this in your mind: a witch leading a herd of people through the dark streets chanting/mumbling about being in purgatory. Never have I had so many stares in my entire life, but I can't blame them.  

 While we were down there, a bunch of us decided to go explore on our own a bit and we were able to see this:

 

 

And then we ate this enormous cheese empanada that tasted like funnel cake:

 

 
That concludes the night tour at El Centro Histórico.
Sunday was our trip to South Quito.

Usually people don't really enjoy going to South Quito because "there isn't anything to see", it's were the poorer population generally lives with unfinished houses and buildings, and as I was told, it is more dangerous. Daniel, however, has connections for everything and so he arranged our little trip to show us that South Quito really isn't that bad. He actually use to live there for a few years so he knows people and had them set up a play date for us. We went down there to meet a bunch of other people our age.

Initially we all sat in one big, open room staring at each other trying to figure out what we were going to do for an entire morning/afternoon with all of these strangers. Once the awkward ice breakers started, there was no possible way to be shy around each other anymore.

After lunch we went to a park that was just a minute walk from where we were that morning. There was a soccer game going on that we could watch but instead we all decided to play a few rounds of duck duck goose and cat and rat or something like that, hah. We all became one big happy family.

Daniel had to tell us that we could only stay for five more minutes and we were all pretty bummed about it. The good news is that we are all friends on Facebook and we actually make plans to get together still. I would say it was a successful day in South Quito. :)

Siempre amigos! :)

UNA GEMELA

I have a new sister! Actually, I have for a few weeks now. Her name is Nicole Marks and she actually goes to Juniata too. She was originally with a different host family but after some switching around and agreeing to only speak Spanish to each other when we are home, she now lives with me!
 
Many people think that we are twins or are at least related, but the truth is that we actually didn't really even talk much until we got here in Ecuador. We have mutual friends at Juniata but that's probably the only reason we have ever talked. Now it's funny because some of the people in our BCA group thought that we were best friends.

Even freshman year I remember people telling me that they confuse us two. I think that even more people here think we look similar because someone brings it up or asks us about it nearly three times a week. Now we can say we are sisters. Hah, here is a conversation from just the other day with one of the other girls from BCA who tagged me instead of Nicole in one of hr pictures on Facebook:

Kara Hagerich hah, thats nicole!

Louisa Pitney Shit.

Louisa Pitney Wait, are you sure?

Louisa Pitney No, don't answer that

When everything was confirmed that she was going to move in, Mama Paty and Papa Galo were excited to be able to say that they were going to have twin girls or gemelas. We don't really see it, but I'm curious on all of your thoughts. With that being said, here are a few pictures for comparison:

 

Equator

South Quito

Galapagos

Baños

 

Baños

 Galapagos

We have gotten pretty close since we have been here and it is a lot of fun with her living with me. Both of us have our own room so we do go our separate ways sometimes. Actually, we have even started picking on each other like sisters might and our family thinks its amusing. We are very different but both like to do the same things so it's working out really well. Here's to you, mi gemela!(y gracias a nuestra familia por su paciencia con nosotros). ;)

Twins at heart <3