This blog entry is a long one because I have to write over 300 words for my study abroad program but this should be pretty easy I have lots to write about :)

This last weekend we decided to go on a trip to the town of Baños which is a small tourist town about three and a half hours outside of Quito. I was a little nervous because this was our first trip outside of Quito without it being planned by our program. It was actually really easy we went to the bus station and got our tickets. It still blows my mind that everything is so cheap, for a one way ticket we each payed only $3.50 which is super cheap. When we got to Baños it was around 2:30 so we ate lunch and went on a hike. The hike took us up the side of a mountain that was right under Volcán Tungurahua the hike was beautiful and we were able to see the whole town of Baños from the mountain. We were not able to do the whole hike unfortunately because we did not have enough daylight, but the part we did was spectacular. The next morning we got up bright and early to go white water rafting. I have decided that this is pretty much my favorite sport it is so fun. The river we went through was class III and IV rapids so it was pretty wild at parts. About halfway through the rafting we stopped to take a break and we left the boats on shore and went swimming in another river that fed into the bigger one. To get to the part we were swimming in we had to go right through the middle of a Baptism that was happeneing. I felt really bad but the guides did not seem to think it was a problem so there was not much we could do about it. We ended up swimming in a little pool at the bottom of a waterfall. It was so pretty. The other funny thing that happened was that we were in the middle of some class III rapids and our guide asked if we wanted to go swimming so I was like sure why not? And goes alright get in so we all jumped in and held onto the raft while we went through class III rapids it was crazy.
After rafting we went back and rented bicycles to go bicycling la ruta de las cascadas or the route of the waterfalls. We biked to probably 10 or so water falls and were able to hike down to one of them and stand underneath it. At one point it started raining a little bit on our ride and we came around a corner and spanning the valley was a double rainbow, it was pretty much out of a fairytale.
Sunday we got up and went Canyoning which is rappelling down waterfalls. I was kind of scary but absolutely beautiful at the same time. I was really sad that I did not have my camera but oh well it was a great experience.