I promise you won’t find gag gifts, or single-use items, or “fad” items. Instead you’ll find products I truly love (and have bought with my own money), causes I support, and gifts that do good. Conspicuous waste should never be celebrated.
From camera protection, to portable door alarm, these are must-have travel items under $25 for practical, non-sense travelers.
Apparently they all ended up here in Vilcabamba.
I’ve never seen so many old people and tie dye-clad people – sometimes they’re the ones and the same – since… Well, never, actually.
Vilcabamba is experiencing some sort of gringo boom, it seems like. It’s especially popular with the retired folks. We came to Vilcabamba on our way to Peru from Baños. We didn’t really know what to expect – but surely we didn’t expect a town overrun with expats and tourists.
Baños is located at the bottom of a still very much active volcano, Tungurahua. So active that it’s constantly spewing smokes. It definitely makes life exciting.
Having stayed in Baños for almost 2 months, both Jack and I have discovered some places that quickly became our favorites. We’d love to share some of them with you.
When we’re not working or partying, we’re jumping off bridges. There’s this bridge in Banos called San Francisco, which is the longest, tallest bridge in town. Go to the bridge at any given time and you’ll find a couple of guys hanging out offering a chance to swing jump off the bridge.
We stumbled across this apartment when we were trying to help our friends, Miin and Neil, to find an apartment here in Baños.
The guy quoted us $25 per person per week to this 3 br apartment right in the center of the city.
(You should’ve seen the face of the wife when she found out – she knew she could’ve charged us more.)
It comes with cable TV, free WiFi, and hot water. And we even have hot water in the kitchen – the first we’ve ever had in South America.
What happens when you hand 30 kids soda bottles 3 days in a row? Fun creatures is what happens.
All of the stuff below were made during activity time at the Foundation in Baños – where we spent 3 weeks working with local kids and teaching English to adults.
In case you’re curious, we’re still in Baños, Ecuador at the moment. We’ve been here for 5 weeks. Don’t worry, the end of this week we’re really, this time for real, going to move on.
A couple of weeks ago, I left Jack behind in Baños while a girlfriend and I made a weekend trip to Cuenca.
On the agenda: girls-only time and visiting Ingapirca.
Unfortunately, for my first Inca ruin ever, Ingapirca turned out to be only mildly entertaining.
We had a plan to send postcards to our families back home from the places we’ve visited during our around the world trip. But not until Galapagos did we finally get a chance.
It was interestingly hard to come up with something to write about knowing there’s no ‘Ctrl-Z’ button to save us if we make a mistake. We couldn’t remember the last time either of us has written so much using pen and paper.
We’re on our last week here in Baños. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been here a month. It’s sad to think that soon we’ll be leaving our newfound friends behind and once again we’ll be facing the unknowns and the unexpected that our travel will bring.
We’ve spent our month here in Baños wisely, we think. We’ve volunteered our time working with the kids of Baños (more on this later) and both Jack and I have improved our Spanish by taking private lessons. We now know how to express our confusions in words other than mute blank stares (boo yah!).
As we all know, traveling is not without challenges. Especially when you’re traveling in a country where you don’t speak the language. Especially if you’re traveling in a country where you don’t speak the language during rainy season.
With so many waterfalls and rivers around Baños, it’s no wonder that every tour agency in town offers some sorts of water related activities, like canyoning.
I had my doubt about this whole canyoning thing at first. Rappelling is just a fancy name ‘Don’t let go of that brake hand or you’ll get in serious trouble.’
We’ve been in here for 2 weeks now. The longest we’ve ever stayed in a place. And the crazier part? We now have a routine. We have English classes to teach and children to supervise. We have Spanish classes to go to. We’ve been busy.
