Baños – Week 2 of 4 (Tena, Amazonas, and Napo River)

Our second week in Baños involved more volunteer work, which you can check out here www.facebook.com/Fundacion.ArteDelMundo, a trip to a town (Tena) located at the beginning of the Amazon rain forest. It was a three hour bus ride to get there and the experience was amazing! Also, we went Canyoning (ziplining)!

AMAZON TRIP to TENA, ECUADOR

The most famous tree of the Amazon is the Ceiba, or Kapok, and as you can see has a large trunk.

In the town of Tena, you can see where the Rio Tena and Rio Pano rivers meet. These two rivers join with many others to eventually form the Amazon River in Brazil. 

Tena has the Bioparque Amazónico La Isla which houses a few of the animals found in the Amazon. 

The second day in Tena we did an all day Amazon Jungle and River trek. We encountered monkeys in the park of a small town, boating and floating down the Napo River, shooting a native blow dart gun, painting our faces like the local indigenous people, tasting the seeds of a cocoa plant, and visiting a zoo in the middle of the rain forest. The zoo had all types of animal species of the Amazon and a majority of the animals were given to the zoo by local authorities who catch them or took them from people who illegally owned them.           

CANYONING (ZIPLINING) IN BANOS, ECUADOR

Baños – Week 1 of 4

We arrived in Baños on January 10th, 2014. We will be here for a month working with the local children on art projects, gardening, teaching them English as well as athletic activities. The school’s name is Fundacion Arte del Mundo! On Facebook here.

Right along the South edge of the city is a small, but neat waterfall coming down the side of Vulcan Tungurahua.

At the bottom of the waterfall is a pool where visitors can swim.

Banos street food. Guinea Pig anyone?

One day we did a hike up to Bellavista and Runtun to catch a glimpse of the top of Vulcan Tungurahua. It is a massive and active volcano!

Looking down on the city of Banos from Bellavista point.

Quito and La Mitad del Mundo

After a long bus ride, border crossing, and multiple police stops (they look for drug smuggling heavily from Colombia) we made it to Quito, Ecuador.

We spent a couple of days here and one of the sites was Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world) and the equator. This is the place where Charles – Marie de la Condamine made the measurements in 1736 proving that this was the equiatorial line (the equator).

 

 

A view of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres!

Pasto, Colombia

We arrived in Pasto on January 5th for the Festival de Los Blancos y Negros!

We stayed with a wonderful family for two days and they had to think we were crazy because of the amount of powder, face paint, and spray foam we were covered in.
Check out the videos of our “Drive-by Sprayings.”

Salt Cathedral of Zipaquira and Andres Carne de Res Restaurant

Our last day in Bogotá, Dan and Marlene brought us north of Bogotá to visit a large salt mine in the town of Zipaquira (Salt Cathedral of Zipaquira). Within the many large tunnels of the mine were cathedrals and visitors galore.

After the salt mine we drove to another town called Chia to eat at the world famous Andres Carne de Res. This place is hard to describe so look at the pics, but the meat and food was absolutely amazing!