We arrived in Baños in the dark, so it was quite striking in the morning to see the landscape as the mist drifted and lifted. Tungurahua volcano is right there, and there’s streams and jungle everywhere. We biked from our hotel along the Pastaza river and took a zipline across and walked back over a suspension bridge. We made a quick tour to see the Diablo waterfall, and Jonathan introduced us to guaba fruit. We had the local delicacy of fried trout for lunch.

From now on, it’ll be no more cool folk, just me on my lonesome. So I signed up to go rafting in the afternoon, to ease my way into lonesomeness. It was quite disorganized and annoying compared to my activities up till now. Rio Pastaza is a class 3 river but lately there’s been a lot of rain so the river is extra full and extra silty. My raft cohort was pretty dysfunctional, and we got beached up on rocks several times. The dysfunction of raft “Pirañas Internationales” included people falling over while trying to carry the raft to the river, squeamishness about getting their feet wet, and prioritizing posing for pictures over boat safety instruction.

On the way back to Baños we got stuck in a traffic jam, so there wasn’t time for much else in the day: I went back to the hotel, did my laundry in the shower, and reorganized my gear for solo bike touring.

F