side trip to Baños

(Just a little fair-warning…this post may take the cake for the record number of pictures in one post in 71toes history.  We’re making history right here!  I apologize in advance but I want to have all these pics. in the same place for future-finding-purposes.  Also, I’m writing this fast…it’s taken forever to wrangle these pictures together and now I don’t have a lot of time for writing, so bear with me here…wish I could write more but hope the pictures help tell the story.)

The adventure started when we loaded the bus at 5:00a.m. and found that the bus company had sent the wrong bus…we were short a few seats.  We had to wait for an hour and a half for a different bus, and then we got stopped in a two-hour traffic delay.  At first I was frustrated…worried all those delays would take away from the things we had scheduled to do.  But that stop on a lonely highway in the middle of gorgeous green mountains surrounded by so many local people was quite an adventure in and of itself.

Everyone got out of their cars to walk and stretch their legs so we joined right in.

Dave even did a little yoga:

 I love the little farms covering the hills all over Ecuador.

 They are so neat and tidy and green and some are so steep!

 I had to take a picture of this cool fruit that I cannot now remember the name of…

Finally got to our destination where these boys found a deserted basketball hoop and miraculously a little plastic ball they had fun with for a while until it got smashed…

Zip-lining was first on the agenda.

 …and we had some excited kids about that little fact.

 It was Brynne and Mike’s anniversary this day.  What a way to spend it.

My very favorite part of the day was that Lucy gave in and agreed to go on the tandem run with me.

We got to do that “superman” pose for it (like Claire and Drew in the picture above), and we could hold hands so she decided she’d give it a try.  I wish I could explain how it felt to hold her hand flying over all that beauty and look over to see her just beaming.  It was a moment I never want to forget.

Because she made that run, she had to do the next one to get back.  It was a strenuous hike over roots and rocks to get to the next take-off point and it was the first of many of those hikes that girl would brave but she made it (I should say “we” because it takes all the grit of both of us), and the sweet zip-lining guy went with her back:

It was pretty dark by that time and she couldn’t see anything on that last run, but she still came out so victorious.  I told her how proud I was of her that she was “in the arena” and she agreed 🙂

Night and fog had fallen by the time we were done and we were just so happy the rain had held out and that we had had the chance to see all that gorgeousness.

 …and a little serenading by Claire:

We woke up early the next morning to take a trip to the thermal pools in the drizzling rain:

There were three of them:  cold, hot, and extremely hot.  I’m talking practically boiling.

Oh boy, we looked like lobsters when we got out of the last one.  The idea is to get in there then freeze yourself in these natural showers and then the cold pool to give your circulation a little extra finesse.

Then we took off in this bus for our Jungle Tour.

We went to this little village where the girls painted our faces:

…and their pet monkey chose Lucy to be her best friend.

Lucy thought she had died and gone to Heaven with that thing latched onto her.

 Claire was pretty delighted that she shared with her as well.

We learned to aim blow-darts:

And I’m pretty proud to say mine made it to the target 🙂

(It was Steve and Julie’s anniversary this day.  Crazy two anniversaries in two days, right?)

Then we went to this animal preserve.

They were apparently not trying to preserve the life of this gigantic squirming bug because they tried to get takers to eat that thing.

 And surprisingly, we had a taker:

She did it to win a bet with her dad, but still, I cannot believe she ate that giant live thing.  That takes some guts I tell you!

We checked out the animals…

And a little Amazon jungle canoeing:

 We had some fancy footwear they let us borrow for that 🙂

We kept that fancy footwear for our waterfall hike.

Boy it’s hard to write the emotion into a post like this that is spilling out with pictures.  There was SO much more going on than these moments caught by the camera.  This was an adventure like no other.

And adventures make my heart swell.  And sometimes also make it break.

This waterfall hike part of the adventure was tough emotionally.  It was the beginning of a thread that morphed into something so much bigger and darker for me and Dave in the days that were coming: some cold hard realization of just how much vision Lucy has lost and continues to lose and what that means for our family.  Some day I will go into details of those thoughts, when I can make sense of them all, but for now I will just say that Lucy was magnificent.  It was a tough hike…for someone who can’t see well and doesn’t have the greatest sense of balance.  I made Dave go ahead and this sweet Spanish-only-speaking tour guy stayed with me and Lucy helping to help her maneuver up and over roots and boulders and branches and mud.  That’s just what we do, and have done over and over again in so many different ways through the years.  We help her do things she thinks she can’t do alone and she comes out victorious and we all cheer and glow and bask in the strength she is gaining.

And it is good.  It’s been a really good way to live life.  This girl has come so far!  Her courage has blossomed and she’s become so much stronger.  She’s a spitfire and it’s going to get her places in life.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not tearing our hearts up sometimes.  And we’re continually trying to find the balance.

That girl has grit though I tell you.  I turned around and took this picture when we could finally hear the waterfall roaring and I knew we’d see it before too long.  So proud of this girl (and our extra helper…man alive I wish I could speak Spanish!)

 And then, there we were.  That glorious beauty spilling out of that mountain right in front of us.

 I had to snap a quick picture of Lucy’s shoes:

(There was no way she would put on the rain boots everyone else was wearing…)

Proud of those shoes and the feet that fill them.

Everyone was already swimming in that waterfall to their heart’s delight.

 …and Lucy was quick as a wink to strip down and get right in.

 She had a pretty sweet sister waiting for her to show her the ropes.

 And she was pretty delighted about it all.

Dave, Lu and I sent off the rest of the crowd to the next stop: the rope swing, and we started on our journey back to the bus since we knew it would take a while.

I sent the camera with my girls so we could see some of that adventure recorded when we met up again.

…and we all met up beaming at the end of the trail…they had loved the swing.

 Check out how far out this thing goes:

 We could see them swinging out from far below…it was quite a swing!

 The next day we had a surprise ride on this waterfall overlook cable ride:

Yep, this little red basket took us right over the top of a waterfall…

 …with nothing but what sure seemed like a teeny cable holding us up.

We loved it.

 Lucy?  Not quite sure…

 This was their final verdict:

 Ha!

Then we went to “Devil’s Cauldron” (a different waterfall) which is one of the most powerful waterfalls I’ve seen.

 Once again, it was a hike in, but much more flat with a pathway so Lucy, although tired, did great.

Let’s just take a look at how powerful that water is:

You could crawl in this little crawl-space right back behind it.

We had to really smoosh into that little cave/tunnel:

…to get up to here:

Claire took off her shoes so they wouldn’t get soaked going right behind the fall:

Here I am trying to crawl out of that thing:

Elle and I walked down that labyrinth of steps to the next level:

While Dave and Lu got a head start to get back out of that thing:

Someone told these people that one of these kids was famous so they all wanted a picture:

This picture is a good depiction of how everyone felt at the end of the hike back out:

We stopped at this smoothie stand and waited forever…not such a good move since we were ready to get on the road again…

…so that we could get to the last stop of this adventure: these swings:

You stood on this platform and they dropped that plank of wood right out from under you and off you went.

Let’s check it out, here’s Dave:

I think this is Steve to give a little more drama:)

Check out how far we got catapulted out there:

I’m sure glad those straps held up!

Here’s Grace:

Claire was scared to death and had to mull it over for quite a while…

And didn’t regret it 🙂

Lucy chose to write more of her book while she waited:

…which she was pretty delighted about I must say.

Grace also did this upside-down one…