Tag: photography

White Water Rafting

My name is Ariel Stolz and I’m 22 years old!

That’s Me 🙂

Right now I’m volunteering at Mayra’s Spanish School with my boyfriend as we travel around Colombia and Ecuador for two months. We film ukulele tutorials and showcase the beautiful places that we are visiting or living in and post it to Youtube as Ariel Ukulele.  

Estoy aprediendo español! But I have a lot more to learn and going to a spanish school and being immersed in the culture is the perfect way to improve.

One of the best parts of volunteering here is that we get to stay two weeks in a beautiful town! There is so much to do here and in my next few posts I’m going to share some of the activities that I did and you can do too!

White Water Rafting

After arriving late Saturday evening we went to bed “early” (before midnight) because we had to wake up bright and early for our rafting trip the next day. We paid only $20 per person and we got a whole day experience and lunch!

The drive to the rafting spot was amazing, we saw so many gorgeous waterfalls since the whole road was along the river. Once we finally arrived to the river we got the rundown: how to paddle, the commands to listen out for, how to help people back onto the boat, ect. So now we are basically rafting experts!

We started out on our adventure!

It was tons of fun and really relaxed. At least at the beginning until our guide decided that it would be hilarious to push people into the water when they weren’t looking. Soon no one was safe and everyone went in the water at least once, or many twenty times. If you tried to help someone else back in the boat you were vulnerable and probably the next victim! Finally we had to compose ourselves because the rapids were coming again.

At the end of the trip we went to a restaurant for lunch.

Across the street they were selling Cuy, which is guinea pig! And we tried a piece before heading home for the day!

Exploring Baños, Ecuador

The City of Baños

Baños de Agua Santa (known as Baños) is a truly beautiful city. It is located at the northern foothills of the Tungurahua volcano, at an elevation of 1,820 meters (5,971 feet) in central Ecuador. Baños de Agua Santa translates to Baths of Holy Water. It is named after the hot springs located around the city! These hot springs even have healing properties due to various mineral content.

Gateway to the Amazon

Baños is well-known as the “Gateway to the Amazon”, because it is the last big city before reaching the jungle and the Amazon River basin. It is popular with both foreign and domestic travelers coming for outdoor activities and nature, that’s why Baños is also known as the adventure capital of Ecuador. You can go white water rafting, hike to waterfalls, rock climbing, biking, puenting, swing at the casa del arbol, explore the beautiful town, eat local foods and much more!

In upcoming posts Ariel (another volunteer here with Mayra) will tell you more about the activities she did in Baños.

The waterfall: Manto de la Novia

-Esmee 🙂