Baños

We headed here to go on a swing. Simple, but that’s what I knew of Baños. Oh, and also that the name means ‘Baths’, or toilets if you are asking for one.
It has some hot springs in the centre of town which have been made into pools, one freezing, one hot and another at 44 degrees hot! It’s pretty cheap, so obviously that was the first thing we did on arrival!
Baños is also know as a real extreme sports place. Loads of rafting, mountain biking, hiking, climbing and any other sort of tour you can make money from. I really liked the place!
Our first night at the hostel, there was a beer pong tournament, we didn’t play well, but got to meet a big group, of mainly Ozzie’s, that had just finished a winter season in Banff, there were 10 o them, but some taken out with dodgy bellies. The ones still standing went out for a few more beers and had a great night. There was a salsa club in the bar, which was empty, so me and Kirsty took it upon ourselves to ‘teach’ everyone else how dance. Was a lot of fun!
Next day, a few sore heads at breakfast, but raw hostel had some good food, so could have been worse. I don’t think we did too much the next day apart from walk around the town and play with he hostel dog. There was a national holiday over the coming weekend, so lots going on. We just hung out and ate some food.
Next day was a slow start and we decided to head up and have a go on he swing at he end of the world. It’s not mega impressive, but you can get a good picture!
Following day, we took some bikes and headed off to see another big thing about Baños, the waterfalls! The Pailon Diablo is tbe one everyone takes pictures of, it was mega busy, so we didn’t manage to get ‘the shot’ by crawling through a hole, but was good all the same. There are about 8 waterfalls dotted along a 20km stretch of road, which is mainly down hill, so you can coast most of the way. The traffic is crazy busy and a deep drain lines the side of the road, so not your ordinary ride. There are some tunnels too, Kirsty was over taken by a bus in one tunnel, super dangerous! A day later, a guy in the hostel had a real bad accident. He doesn’t know what happened, he woke up on the road thinking he was just getting home from the night before. A broken cheek and some other road related injuries. We know this as we bumped into the Banff guys later in Mancora and one of be girls had taken him to hospital! Anyway, after the last waterfall, we really good epinadas and then loaded the bikes into a truck to take us back to town. That night, some more drinks with the Banff crew and all went out to watch the Colin Mcgregor fight. Everywhere was packed so we ended up drinking in the street and watching it through a bar window. A much better idea in my book, and cheaper! After, we headed back to the same club, but this time it was packed!! More salsa action, but the place was full with locals, so no room at all. I ended the night sat on the street drinking with some lads from Quito. They had a band and we were talking in pigeon English/Spanish about music until 5am, lovely stuff!
Nothing much happen the following day! We planned to get the night bus out to Montanita at 11:30 the next night, so we thought we could use the day to go rafting. Good idea!
We went in the afternoon after packing to the river, there were 4 of us including two girls from Quebec, then two guys, so 6 in the boat. I’ve never done it before, so didn’t quite know what to expect. I was made to be at the front on on side, Kirsty on the other. We had our briefing and headed done to the river with the raft. The idea was to launch n an Eddie and cruise out into the river, avoiding the massive rock with water rising over it. Now, this was a grade 3 river, with two grade 4 sections, so not tame by any means.
We all get in the raft and head off. All of 5m later, the raft has gone up the rock backwards and flipped us. Possibly the worst place on the river! I can remember looking down at Kirsty, 2m bellow me, thinking, ‘shit, I’m gonna land right on you’ and I did! Cold water shock straight away, I was under the water with someone on top of me. I manage to struggle them out of the way and then I had the raft on me. I managed to fight my way out from under it, still holding my breath, and find the surface. I took a massive breath and got slightly worried about he lack of buoyancy. Scary stuff! Sea water is way more predictable than that! I jut about still had hold of my paddle, but was fighting to get myself going feet first. I lost a shoe fighting the current and was still struggling to breath. I caught back up with the raft, at the same time, my lost shoe appeared beside head. The guide flipped the raft over and we all got hauled back in. One missing, a Canadian girl. Where? We could see her clinging to the rock that flipped us, few! The safety kayaker went and fetched her, put her back in the boat and we pulled over. Everyone was quite shaken up and the guide was mortified it has happened. The girls thought he’d done it on purpose to start with, but I knew he didn’t as it was really dangerous! We headed off down stream and I started to really enjoy it. Kirsty was screaming at everything thinking we’d flip again, but we didn’t. It was really good fun and I’m ready to have another go later in the trip.
We headed back into town, stopping for the guide to buy us apology beers on the way, and got some food.
We collected our bags, said good bye to the Banff crew, it was Matts 30th Birthday, so gutted to be going; then headed off to catch the 11:15 bus to Montañita. We should have stayed...Read more