Welcome to the jungle

Baños is the start of the jungle here in Ecuador.  The town itself is more mountainous but as you move more and more east it becomes more vibrant green, more vegetation, and just more jungle like. Here I stayed at Plantas y Blanco, and since they made the mistake of telling me there is a dorm room for me when there really wasn´t, I got to stay in a private room for the same price as the dorm (7 dollars).  It was nice to have all my stuff all over the room.  Just a reminder of, how tired I am of wearing the same 3 outfits. hah.

The road from Baños to Puyo is a beautiful ride, and is highly recommended to do by bicycle.. It is over 40 kilometers and you pass a series of waterfalls on the way.

At the start of the ride, I met Carlos from Spain, and we spent the day biking together.

We stopped at the 4 waterfalls along the way. The first two you could see from the road, and the other 2 involved a 15 minute hike in to see them.  Most people turn around after the third waterfall, but we decided to continue on since it was a beautiful ride through towering jungle walls.

 As we didn´t get as far as Puyo (later we found out we were only 20 minutes away), we stopped in a small town called San Francisco.  The people from where we rented our bikes told us that we won´t have a problem getting transportation back to Baños (¨just hop on a bus or a truck going that way¨) However, buses and trucks passed us not stopping. After waiting for about 30 minutes, we decided we had to hitchike, which is a very common thing here.  A group of 2 guys and 2 girls stopped by and we hopped on the back of their truck.

stopping in San Francisco to buy my favorite fruit here in South America (granadilla)

 Today made me even more excited to go deeper into the jungle.  Tomorrow in the morning I plan on soaking in the hot springs here, and then hopping on a bus to go alittle deeper into the jungle (Tena)

the church in the plaza (Baños)