Jumping Off Bridges & Rio Pastaza

View from my apartment!

What a weekend!  My friends and I went to Baños again, but this time we did a whole lot more than last time.  We stayed in Ambato on Friday night.  After a nice dinner, we came home and hung out on the roof of our complex for a while.  We have an amazingly pretty view.  Our apartment complex is an 8 story building and there's a ladder that goes up to the very top of the building.  The scary thing is that there's no ledge, so we stayed in the middle and sat off to the side that dropped down only one story, not 8.  Sitting up there was nice and relaxing!  We left to Baños, which is only about an hour away from here, on Saturday morning around 9 or 9:30.  We were the first of our group to get there, so we had to wait a little bit, so we chilled at a café for a little.  After a little waiting, we made our way to Rio Pastaza (which is where we were going to go rafting), stopping to witness some people zip-lining.  I would have done it, except it would have been a 30-45 minute wait.  We continued on our journey to Rio Pastaza, but we stopped at another bridge where people were doing what they call "bridge swinging" which is kind of like bungee jumping, but kinda different.  You jump off the bridge, but you're not tied at your feet, and instead of jerking up and down, you swing back and forth.  A couple of my friends and I did it.  It was such an incredible rush!  I loved it.  Paragliding is in store for the near future.  I'm working myself up for jumping off a plane!  (But seriously... I want to skydive).  There's another touristy town near Ambato that apparently has some of the best quality jeans in Ecuador, and they also have paragliding there!  So we're going!

Jumping off a perfectly sturdy bridge :)

Like I said, jumping off that bridge was suuuper fun.  I thought that the scariest part would be the jumping off part, but the worst part was when we were just standing up on the ledge.  Jumping off was kind of easy.  When you're falling, there's this moment when you think, "oh shit!  What the hell am I doing?" but other than that, it's all fun and game.  Then it's over and you want to do it again!!  My head jerked quite a bit, but it didn't hurt in the moment.  Probably because I was on such an adrenaline rush.  It's a little sore today, but a lot of it probably has to do with rafting too.  Okay, so, rafting!  We finally got to Rio Pastaza and the company we were doing it through drove us down to the part of the river where we were starting.  They gave us a quick run through of how we were to steer the boart and what we had to do if we ourselves or anybody in our boat fell out of the raft and into the river.  The sky was absolutely beautiful when we were on the road, but by the time we got there, you could see a raincloud in the distance.  That wasn't going to stop of us from going rafting, though.  We had two boats, ours was yellow and we found a Barbie in it, so we named it Barbie's Banana Boat.  Our guide was awesome.  He knew that river like the palm of his hand.  Towards the end of of the rapids, I fell out of the boat.  It all happened in slow motion.  My foot was where it needed to be so I was dangling off the edge of the raft for what seemed like an eternity.  But then my knee got stuck in an awkward position, so I decided to move my foot from where it needed to be and I fell into the river.  Getting back on wasn't the easiest of things, especially because we were in the rapids.  I finally got back into the raft and assumed by position as if nothing happened.  We jumped into the river and swam for a little bit.  About halfway through our 17 km trip down the river, it started to drizzle a bit, and within the next hour or so it started to rain a lot.  My eyes and contacts didn't appreciate it.  The rain made things so much more intense.  It wasn't any more difficult to steer the raft through the river, but look wise, we looked like such badasses rafting in the rain!  At some point when it was raining a lot, one of the guys on my boat said that this all reminded him of the rain scene in The Notebook.  I took this as a cue to begin quoting it, so I said, "Why didn't you write me?  Why?  It wasn't over for me," and two of the guys (both of whom will remain nameless) on my boat automatically responded: "I wrote you 365 letters.  I wrote you every day for a year.  It wasn't over…it still isn't over."  Witnessing them quote The Notebook is definitely the most manly thing I've ever seen (heard?) a man do.  The rain was teasing us.  It would stop raining only to start again with greater force.  It got to the point that the rain was dropping down on us like needles.  It hurt!  But still, it was so much fun!!  At the end of the 17 km, we got out of the river and into the van that was to take us back to our original location.  We stopped at a mini aquarium that housed various types of creatures that live in Rio Pastaza, including electric eels, various types of tilapia, piranhas, and several other carnivorous, scary, ugly-looking fish.  We were supposed to go hang out with monkeys but we weren't able to because of the rain and because it was too dark outside by the time we finished rafting.  So we ate dinner and then went back to our hostel where we showered and got ready to go out in Baños.  One of my friends' co-workers was having a birthday celebration, so we went to that.  By the end of the night we met a bunch of cool people, including but not limited to, Jonathan from Israel, Caya and her brother, Cedar, from Canada, and Patricio from Ecuador.  We woke up early yesterday morning to secure a spot on a bus back to Ambato because Emily, one of my roommates, had to be back here for a meeting at 4.  We got home around 1ish, so I decided to take a nap and I didn't wake up until around 4:30.  Other than not getting to see the monkeys, it was definitely a successful trip.  :)

Chao!