Adventures Abroad: Trip to Banos

So this past weekend, I decided to take some time off from the job hunt. It has been kind of stressful, especially with my bank account running kind of low. But I needed a break so I decided to head to Banos with my friend Ruth, who had lived there for the past six months and knew all of the cool places to go. We left Friday afternoon and after a bus ride the took almost 4 hours I was exhausted, but like I said Ruth knew all the best places to go. So after a good meal and a huge mocha shake at a small cafe, I was recharged. That recharge was very much needed, because Banos has a ton of awesome bars with endless cheap beers. Bar hoping lasted late into the night with dance clubs, dive bars and meeting several other travelers Good thing Ruth's former bosses, a Canadian guy and Ecuadorian girl who are married and own the main English school in Banos, let us crash at their place.
The next morning while battling a pretty harsh hangover another friend of Ruth's, John, offered to be our tour guide for the day. First off we started at La Casa del Arbol, a tree house built high up in the hills as a Volcano look out. This place is also known as the Swing at the end of the world, because it has a swing off of one of the branches that swings way out over the hillside with an awesome view. I guess the whole place was recently rebuilt to be much safer, as well as adding another swing to deal with the crowds. Apparently we picked a perfect day to go up there, because the weather was perfect and clear so we could see the volcano, which is active and spit out some smoke a couple of times. We also got there before the daily crowds so we didn't have to wait long to try out the swings, but as we were leaving trucks and buses full of people were on their way up.
Our next stop on our informal tour of the Banos area was lunch in Rio Verde, a smaller village a little ways outside of Banos on the way towards the rain forest. My stomach was still fighting me from the night before, so I didn't eat much. After lunch we went for a hike down the Rio Verde to the waterfall Pailon Del Diablo. I may have heard something about it being one of the biggest waterfalls in Ecuador, but I haven't looked that up yet. It was really awesome. You can actually hike down one side or the other, and can pretty much go right underneath it, but both trails aren't connected in the middle because of some ownership disputes. It was very beautiful though. The trail we took even had a sketchy suspension bridge, but it was a nice little walk down. Wears you out on the way up though, especially if you get wet going under the falls.
By this time, we were all extremely exhausted and called it a day, because Ruth and I had to catch another 4 hour bus back to Quito so we wouldn't get back to town to late at night. We couldn't leave without one more of those gigantic mocha shakes though. Probably the only reason I made it back to Quito without completely passing out. Exhausting couple of days, but amazing trip.