Baños de Agua Santa

Spending a few days in Baños (referring to bathing, not the other thing) - an intimate and cared for tourist town which has everything going for it but for the fact that it is the shadows of Tungurahua, a highly active volcano. Town inhabitants have been evacuated three times in the last 10 years, and the hotel staff couldn’t recall when the last time ash fell (hmm, was it October 2010? Checking online shows it was actually April 2011). OK, so we’ll have to keep looking for a place to hunker down until we move to Cuenca in November.

         

End of the rainy season clouds kept us away from a hike to the top of a ridge overlooking town which also offers great views of the volcano, so we had to move to plan B.  Remember when we said that the kids would realize how uncool their parents are?  Well, today was perfect evidence of that:  Everything they wanted to do--Horseback riding up the mountain without helmets? No. Zip line which carries you 300m over the canopy to a height of over 80m (remember, m = ft x ~ 3). No. Cable car (basically a little basket held on one cable) across a narrow gorge 2 football fields above the raging water? No. Join the busses on the highway in a little go cart for rent? No.

Can you find Niko and Kaia?

So we settled on a spectacular bus ride to an awesome waterfall on the edge of the Amazon basin known as Pailon del Diablo on the Rio Verde.  Kids handled the hike to the waterfall really well, and even squeezed through a small passage to get a look behind the falls.  Came back to the hotel wet, hungry, tired, and happy (see video above).

Niko and Kaia also spent time today  adding an important sentence to their Spanish repertoire:

Quiero comprar una galleta por favor. ( I’d like to buy a cookie please).  Let’s focus on the important stuff, already, OK?