Banos

Oh my starry eyed surprise. I'm so great at keeping up with everything. I guess that's a good thing, means I'm busy. But not entirely.

Hmm last weekend I went to Banos which has so much to do! Got there at night, I thought I would have thrown up on the bus ride there but score! I didn't. The next day we got up and ready and went mountain biking. By mountain biking it meant biking through the mountains on the back country-ish roads. It was beautiful scenery. We took forever to bike about 10 miles because everyone kept stopping to look at the waterfalls, take this little thing over to one of them and to take lots of photos. We then continued and got to this bridge where people were jumping off. They had harnesses and all, and the ropes looked pretty secure. Wasn't as high as I thought it would be but Michael, Ben, Jeff and I jumped off. It was definitely a thrilling experience. The first part was the most terrifying when I was actually flying unconnected to anything, or so it felt. But it wasn't as crazily terrifying as I thought. Then we continued on our bikes to a huge waterfall, it's name had something to do with being the devil's waterfall. We climbed down to it, looked around, then climbed up right next to it through these tunnels and could go behind it. So cool. So wet, though. Then we rode back in the back of a truck to the hotel, my butt hurt so much from the bike riding and I was so tired so napped. We ate some delicious pizza, and by delicious it was like the best thing I've ever eaten. Went on a chiva that night which is basically this open bus that took us up a mountain in the fog to this weird little place with lots of other chivas so we could drink this weird cinnamon drink and then head back down the mountain to go out at an irish bar called the Leprechaun.

The next day some people wanted to hike, some wanted to go home. But me, Valerie, Meaghan and Jeff decided to go to the hot springs, what Banos is famous for. Big mistake, strange use of $2 but a cultural experience. We walked around trying to find the pools near a waterfall, found them, the guy told us they were really full and we might have to wait but we were dumb and went in anyway. Walked in. Looked around. Saw that the water was brown. Lukewarm-warm, like body temperature. Absolutely packed so there would be no room for us. Therefore, we made a group consensus to turn around and head home. Best decision. Who knew what diseases we could have gotten if we had gone in.