The students’ final blog entry: Lydia Miller describes the adventure she found on the return trip to Quito:
Pulling in to the city of Banos, we knew we were in for something very different from our previous week of roughing it in the depths of the jungle. Banos is in the mountains, and it´s a tourist town, through and through.
We dropped off our things at the hostel and spent some time wandering the streets, eating street food, sampling taffy in exotic flavors, eating ice cream and passing endless shops full of tourist toys and trinkets.
After lunch we were ready for an adventure, so a group of us rented some bikes for five dollars, got some hasty, confusing directions, and headed off, out of the city, into the gorgeous foothills of the Andes Mountains. The idea was we would bike mostly down-hill for eighteen kilometers, and then a truck would take us back up to the city.
And so we flew through the cool air, speeding and winding along steep, curving highways, through tunnels, along cliffs, occasionally sprayed by an overenthusiastic waterfall. There were spots to stop and go zip lining or bungee jumping along the way, and we all tried to weigh our thirst for adventure against our meager funds.
I decided to zip line across a valley, and over a waterfall, and I felt like one of the beautiful macaws we see so often here gliding over the jungle. But the highlight of the day by far was a massive waterfall at the very end of our trip—the famous Pailon Del Diablo.
We parked our bikes and hiked to get to it. A dollar fifty entrance fee and a few more turns, and there it was, shockingly close and astoundingly powerful. On the stone overlook where we stood, the water shot up and sprayed us, sometimes in mist, sometimes in torrents so strong we could’tt see anything. We found a path that moved higher around the back of the waterfall, and we followed it up, dropping to hands and knees as the path slimmed to a horizontal crevice we had to scramble and slither up, with the pounding water to our left, and dripping rock on all other sides. We came out in a small area directly behind the waterfall. It was hard to see or hear, so I simply stood there, taking in the power of the water thundering over me.
Squished into the back of a truck with all our bikes, tired and happy and soaking wet, we sang songs and watched the highway snake out behind us as we wound through the mountains, back up to the city. As the sun went down we got lost walking through the streets, feasting on passion fruit and sugar cane juice and delicious empenadas, before we eventually found our hotel, and flopped gratefully onto clean sheets.
