Saturday in Banos – Feb 12th
We are spending the morning here enjoying some shopping and spa treatments before taking the bus to Quito.
Yesterday we had an amazing morning taking the Cascades Tour and as you can see from the photos I posted yesterday I was having Extreme Adventures. First I surprised myself by going over a canyon on one of those stand-up gondolas with only the tour guide and the operator. Wendanita got cold feet and she didn’t tell me until afterwards that it was because she saw that the fellow was operating the contraption with his feet like a bicycle! Yikes, if I had known that I probably wouldn’t have done it but as it was I had a really exhilarating ride.
Next stop was the long trek to the big waterfall. The walk was beautiful but before we headed down we stopped and I did the big upstaging stunt of having an anaconda wrap around my neck. I could feel the muscles rippling and my face was very wary since the head kept turning around to look at me which I found really disconcerting. I was not comfortable!
After that it was all good, lots of walking and stopping for pictures. At one point we crossed a rickety bridge a la Romancing the Stone! I was pretty brave with that as well. Then for the ultimate, the climb up misty wet steps to the waterfalls. The final part was crawling through cave like structures almost on my hands and knees and at one point Oswald had to haul me up through a narrow gap. But it was all worth it to stand directly under the waterfall. It was awesome, both from the view and the experience of feeling it all. Right at the equator, around tropical jungle like terrain, under a waterfall. What could be more perfect? How about seeing orchids growing directly out of trees? Amazing.
Oswald was our tour guide and like all the Ecuadorian men we have met he was a real sweetheart. We asked about eucalyptus and the next thing we knew he had stopped the car and was climbing up a tree to bring us a branch. Turns out he is also a gymnastics teacher at the high school in Banos. Then he picked orchids for us to take home.
I was soaking wet just from the mist but I had a really happy day!
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