Latin America - Baños

Continued As said before Banos was a whole adventure theme park city hidden between the Andes. This small touristy town had more waterfalls than all the waterfalls combined  that I have seen in my lifetime - Maybe that is the pun behind the town's name (In Spanish Baños literally translates to bathrooms) . There was a water fall just couple of blocks away from our hostel which was very much visible from the hostel Hammocks.
  Started the next morning with Zip lining, And so I wore my flip flops as I headed out thinking it would be like any other Zipline I have done in the past. Below are the list of activities included in the zipline
        1. Hike half a mile to reach the top of the mountain.
        2. Zipline in superman position for 850 meter @100km/hr  above a natural river gorge.
        3. Walk across the river on a rope bridge for 200 mts.
        4. Climb on the rocky cliff  holding iron hooks just above the gushing river for 200 mts.
        5 Zipline back in a Sitting position across the river.

Following this we jumped straight into our next adventure - Bunjee. At 20$ per person it was a no professional jump site. But then with a view like that I just had to do it. Can't die in a more beautiful place.
     

With all this adventure done by late afternoon with our adrenalin still pumping, we took a bus ride to catch a glimpse of the mother of all these waterfalls and so rightly named "Pailon del diablo" meaning The Devil's pavilion. We weaved our way through dense rain forest for 4 kilometers and kaboom you come across this beauty. The power of nature is truly astonishing and all one can do is just stand in awe and wonder how minuscule we are in the grand scheme of things.

Devil's Pavilion - Pailon Del Diablo

After aimlessly roaming around enjoying the sights in and around trying to take in as much as possible, We stopped by a small cozy coffee shop very close to the waterfall overlooking the rain-forest and guess what with hammocks. Finishing it up we took the bus back to the town center enjoying the sights off all the smaller waterfalls through the winding road and for the first time since we landed  in Banos we get a glimpse of the giant and the mightiest of them all "Tungrahua" - "Throat of Fire" as the name it is one of the tallest active volcanoes in the country with sesimic activities as recent as 2013.

Mt.Tungurahua

After all this all we needed was some strolls through the scenic town centre with street art everywhere , warm & welcoming vendors trying to convince us for a massage. After all the adventure we caught up in one day it was a well deserved massage. A free movie and dinner provided by the hostel after all this, I just had to grab my beer , head to hammocks outside and thank my dad as i took my first sip like always ;). 

The next day started with a ride to a place which has never missed out a spot in any travel list on earth "Places to see before you die", "natgeo must visit places" blah blah blah and this was the sole reason for us to visit Banos in the first. To top all this it costs only a dollar for the sight "The swing at the end of the world" Though the weather was not in our favour covering up the beautiful views of Mt.Tungurahua it was completely a surreal experience swinging on top of the clouds. i ll just let the pictures talk and i have added a pic from online just top give you an idea on how it must have been on a clear day.

Yes we did this :)

No other better way i can think of to finish of a wonderful trip. A lunch at a cozy bookstore followed by the swing and we were back in Quito for dinner to celebrate my birthday by randomly strolling around Quito's medieval era old town trying to bargain over duplicate soccer club tshirts and somemore tamales.

And so we got over with Ecuador, offcourse with heavy hearts wanting to spend more time but excited to continue our adventure into Panama & Colombia.