Mujer Maravilla

Hello again. I only have a limited time on the computer and there´s an angry looking french guy waiting to use it so this update won´t be able to fully encompass the past few days, but hopefully you can fill in the gaps with your imaginations. Actually the gaps can mostly be filled in with me just wandering around Baños, eating taffy straight off the post and staring at the ridiculously beautiful hills and waterfalls that frame the town.

So, I´m in a town called Baños now. I was originally planning to stay for a day or two, but five days just went by and I´m still here. It´s a magical town in more ways than one. The scenery is incredible, the people are unendingly sweet and helpful, and the hoards of vacationing ecuadorian families that flock in on the weekends make for good people watching. The town is right next to a huge and very active volcano, but so far they´ve been pretty lucky. If you talk to a big fan of the church, they´ll tell you that Baños is protected by the Virgen de la Agua Santa, and if you talk to someone who knows something about volcanos they´ll tell you that Baños is surrounded by mountains that block the lava from being routed towards the city. Besides all that cool stuff, there´s tons of adventure-y stuff to do too. A few days ago I rented a motorbike quad thing and rode through the "path of the waterfalls" to get to this big bridge where I got to jump off (with a bungee cord, obviously) and experience the incredible and frightening sensation of free-falling face first into a rocky white water river. Similarly exhilarating, I went rock climbing with a new friend from my hostel yesterday. The climbs were really hard, and our guide was great. He free-climbed (no ropes) up in order to attach the ropes before we started. It was nuts. He also did this one path that I swear involved several feet of flat rock. I definitely challenged myself, and am pretty proud of what I managed to do. Afterwards we got to do this awesome zipline where I flew superman style over the river. New vocab word: Mujer Maravilla = Wonder Woman.

Now I´m entering my sixth day in Baños and wondering what to do next. I originally thought about going to the coast, but I´d also like to check out Cuenca, a very pretty colonial city in the south nearby a very beautiful national part. I also made friends with some "engineers without borders" students who are working on a project in a nearby jungle town that they want me to come visit. It´s kind of fun to have no idea where I´m going to end up for my last 3 days.