Ecuador - Baños

Going to Baños was one of the main highlights of my trip. It's a town that is full of adventure with any type of outdoor activity you can imagine. About 8 other volunteers and I took a three hour bus ride down there on our first weekend.We did as much as we could in our short time in Baños, one insane thing we did was white water rafting which deserved it's own post you can read here.

If you ever search Ecuador on pinterest the swing on the treehouse is by far the most popular picture that comes up. The first picture shows how you actually get onto the swing.

Getting to and from the swing we hired a truck that just let us all ride in the back. Anything pretty much goes in Ecuador. Seat belts and car seats don't really exist, and basically you can fit as many
people as you want.

Driving home from the swing we stopped at a lookout spot that allowed you to see all of Baños all at once. You can tell how high the swing is from looking down at the city in these pictures.

Another memorable part of the trip was this was the first time I have stayed in a hostel. All of us that went stayed in this one room with a bunch of bunk beds. 

That basically sums up Baños, it is seriously one of the coolest places to visit. I love adventure so it definitely is a place that fits me well. 

Ecuador - White Water Rafting in Baños

Going to Baños was one of the main highlights of my trip. It's a town that is full of adventure with any type of outdoor activity you can imagine. About 8 of the volunteers took a three hour bus ride down there on our first weekend.

We chose to go white water rafting the first day we were there and it was seriously one of the craziest things I have ever done. To paint a picture of this day it was an overall 6 hour excursion since you have to take a bus ride for 2 hours to get to the water. Anyway when we left it was sunny and the whole way there it was pouring rain and we couldn't back out. They had us put on soaked wet suits and shoes that have probably never seen a washer before, which freaked us out even more. By the time we hit the water the rain had pretty much subsided, it was just cold.

On a 1-5 scale for rafting the river we were on was a 4. We signed no waivers or anything so it was pretty shady. Of the four that went with us we were the only raft that didn't tip.  

These pictures seriously don't even capture 80 percent of what we went through. This last picture shows just a glimpse of the amazing scenery down the river. This whole experience was crazy but so much fun. 

Ecuador - La Teleferico

On one of the weekdays a couple other volunteers and I took a morning off and took a gondola ride known as La Teleferico. To give you some info on this it's one of the highest lifts in the world reaching 13,000 ft. Once you get to the top there is a long hike that leads to a volcano. It was so exhausting hiking because of the high altitude, but the views made it well worth it. The pictures below shows how we were literally hiking in the clouds. 

 

 

Ecuador - Street Kid's Project

To give you a summary of what I was doing, I worked with children that work on the street. We moved to a different market every day and held sort of a day care type thing where we taught them basic hygiene skills, read books, played with toys, played soccer, and sang songs.

The kids have so much love for you, it's just amazing. The moment you sit down you have five kids hanging or sitting on you. I also left the market extremely dirty with dirt and other food substances all over me, but it's weird because it really didn't bother me.

This last picture was of my last day in Ecuador. This little boy just crawled into my lap and fell asleep on me. It's crazy that a child will just go to a random stranger and fall asleep, but it was one of my favorite moments there.

Quito Ecuador

Traveling to Ecuador has been on my list of places to go for a few years now. I really wanted to go work with kids in orphanages but there wasn't a program in Ecuador that worked with my schedule so I picked a different program working with street children. I'll get to what that entails later on. For now here's what happened the day I got to Quito.

Currently I am staying with a host family and I wasn't really sure how I would like that but it is pretty great. The night I got here the host mom walked me up five flights of stairs showed me a room and then left the apartment. We are staying in this four story apartment type thing and all the stories have their own entrance and the volunteers occupy one of the floors. At the time I arrived I had no idea that anyone was even on the floor with me so I was a little freaked out. I finally got settled and went to sleep and the next morning I was shocked when seven other people started emerging from different doors. There is 8 living on my floor right now and I lucked out by getting my own room, we do however all share one small bathroom. I was relieved to know that I was in a full house though.

The second day all the new volunteers went out on a tour of Old Town Quito. The pictures below were overviews of the city. The city is so pretty and so colorful! I can't get over all these views.

Every Monday the President come out onto the balcony to greet the Ecuadorian people. While in office he declared himself president for life.

The soldiers outside of the president's house.  

Candid shot of an Ecuadorian boy. He followed us around most of the morning trying to get us to let him clean our shoes.

During the tour we went and toured a few old churches. The architecture and detail was amazing.

We were in the area where this little boy was for around two hours. It didn't move within that period and nobody was around watching him, he just sat there. 

Anyway, that sums up the first few days in Quito. The city was so pretty filled amazing architecture and so many colors, it still blows my mind.