No Fixed Plans

We left the hotel at 8am under the impression that we would be arriving at the hotel at 4:30pm but did not until 6pm. We started on a public bus for about an hour and a half (which is a little chaotic in and of itself). 

We then transferred to a private bus where we drove for 20 minutes before stopping to do a waterfall walk. On the way back we stopped at a cafe where we all got to take a sip of a traditional Ecuadorian alcoholic drink that was warm and had passionfruit. This took us to 12:30. On the way up we had a chance to buy souvenirs, which many of us did before heading to lunch. 

The driver then had a surprise for us by taken us to this “cable car”. This place took the car part very seriously as they had one line with a metal cage painted like a train that 9 of us could stand in at a time and was more like a standing up zip line. None of us realised until after that the rope looked very freyed at the end.

We then headed to these treehouse swings (which was the one stop we were all aware about) that also had Guinea pigs that were being raised for consumption. 

Everyone took a turn on the massive swing and took photos of the hummingbirds before finally heading to the hotel. 

This is where we got explained all the activities we could do for the next day and signed ourselves up. The choices were horseback riding, canyoning, zip lining and parasailing. The company set it up so you could do 3 of the 4 activities and while majority chose to do 2, there was one couple who did 3. 

We then had dinner and afterwards a few chose to hold a book club I hung around in the room. 

After my roommate came back at 11pm we decided we wanted to get a card for one of the girls birthdays the next day so we set off on a wander. We went into 3 different shops before finding one that had a happy birthday balloon and a happy birthday gift box that we bought, planning to just cut one of the sides to make it a card instead of building it. We then messaged everyone else to come sign it before 8:30am (when the canyoning was due to start and 30 minutes before we planned to head off for breakfast) and went to bed. 

Forgetting that we told people to come to the room early, we thought that we’d be able to have a sleep in. Instead we were awoken at 7am. 

This, however, gave us plenty of time to get ready for the birthday girls breakfast where she got given the balloon and card. We then headed looking for souvenirs before 3 of the 5 of us headed for ziplining. 

The first zip line we all went solo before starting to scale the side of a mountain (with harnesses). This somehow caused me to have 2 massive bruises on my legs. 

This however led us to our second zip line where we got the chance to go tandem together. 

We then headed back up the mountain to look at the photos they took before heading back to the hotel for lunch. 

Then we got the chance to go parasailing (which majority of our group did). This took us a few hours as at one point we had to wait for the wind to die down. 

After heading back to the hotel we almost immediately went to dinner where the group all got to try Guinea pig. The staff then brought out a cake and we all sung happy birthday (they sing for much longer than we do in Australia) before it got taken away and  we all got served our main meals. 

After dinner a few of us decided to go out for drinks in a karaoke bar, where we stayed until 1:30am before heading back to the hotel for our 7am wake up alarms (due to having to leave the hotel at 8am).