On Day 20 of my trip to Ecuador, Sierra and I went canyoning and white water rafting near Baños.
Baños
Sierra and I started and ended our day with a visit to Animal Home Veternaria in Baños. to check on the injured dog we brought there the previous night. The dog was bandaged up and one of her legs appeared to be broken. With the vet's help we were trying to figure out if the local shelter could help her. Meanshile, Sierra and I had two adventurous tours booked for the day: Canyoning and White Water Rafting.
Canyoning
Sierra and I joined a canyoning tour in the morning. Our tour group traveled by bus for about 45 minutes to Cashaurco canyon. We geared up at a nearby restaurant then walked about 10 minutes up the canyon to start our adventure.
Sierra and I jumped off waterfalls into swirling pools, rappelled down canyon walls and zip-lined across Rio Cashaurco. The "easiest" parts of our tour through the beautiful canyon were the natural rock "slides". But, even they were a little treacherous as the force of the water pushed us downstream over slick rocks.
Canyoning was fun, terrifying, and exhausting. But, our day was only half over. After a late lunch and short break, Sierra and I were off on our white Water Rafting adventure.
White Water Rafting
A tour van shuttled us to the launch site for our rafting trip on the Upper Rio Pastaza. I've been white water rafting a handful of times but every river is different and I wasn't sure what to expect on this one. Our guide went into great detail regarding safety and rescue procedures in the event someone fell out of the raft or the raft flipped. During our safety briefing, our fellow rafters learned about Sierra's experience as a raft guide and voted her and, by default, me as the first "captains".... the ones at the front of the raft. I knew from my previous rafting experience that the front seats are the most fun but also the scariest and wettest. But, okay.
Rio Pastaza is class III and IV rapids with a lot of big waves. When our rafting guide yelled "paddle, paddle, paddle", I paddled like our lives depended on it. As we hit the big rapids, huge waves splashed me in the face so I couldn't see or breathe. I sometimes bounced off my seat onto the center of the raft or the floor. My paddle couldn't reach the water until I got back into position. By the way our rafting guide continued yelling "paddle, paddle, paddle" I feared my lack of paddling would be the death of us all. And when I watched the first raft in our group lose people in the rapids and, at one point, flip the entire raft dumping everyone, I was determined not to let that happen to us. It wasn't until we were safely back to the tour shop watching the day's rafting videos that I learned the truth about our rafting adventure.
Videos showed that while our guide frantically shouted for us to "paddle, paddle, paddle" through rapids, the raft behind us calmly held their paddles straight up in the air, making it through the rapids perfectly fine. And, while I was frantically paddling through rapids like our lives depended on not getting flipped out of the raft, the guide in the other raft was intentionally dumping people for fun. When I discussed these revelations with my rafting guide daughter, she laughed and said "Ya, guides do that to make the trips more interesting". It might have been nice for her to share that insight with her mother beforehand, don't ya think?
Slideshow
Here are pictures from Day 20 of our trip to Ecuador.
Expenses
I'm doing my best to track expenses in this spreadsheet for anyone that's interested in a similar, relatively low-budget trip.
Ecuador Fun Fact
The active Tungurahua volcano, above Baños, last erupted in 2016.
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