A Little Town Called Baños

I spent last weekend in a town southeast of Quito called Banos. It is a beautiful little town, with mountains, plenty of waterfalls and natural hot springs. My friends and I stayed in a really nice hostel and met a lot of people from all over the world who were also travelling. We made friends with a lot of people from Israel who had just finished with the military and also made friends with locals.

The first night we took a bus up to a volcano. It had a really great view of the town and the tour guides also told us a little bit of history. The second day we went repelling down waterfalls. It was the most adventurous thing I have ever done! First, we repelled down one that was about 40 feet. It was scary and awesome and I felt really accomplished when we were done. But...we weren´t done. The next one was 140 feet. I repelled down a little bit and then there was a cliff and I had no idea what was on the other side. I didn´t know until I was already going down on my rope. I looked down and could not believe it! But we all made it down safely and it was a really amazing experience, probably one of the best in my life!

The final day we went on a tour of the jungle. First we went to a monkey reservation. There were almost 30 monkeys and I held them! They climbed all over us and were not shy at all. It was really fun! Then we went into the jungle and saw lots of really cool things, trees, flowers, waterfalls, huge spiders but no crazy exotic animals. We finished the day at an indigenous community, which was also really interesting.

This week was my first week of the regular semester. All went well, and we are off again this weekend for another adventure!