What happens in Baños…

Let's clarify a few things before you start cracking bathroom (baños) jokes. It's a place. In Ecuador. It's called "Baños." Kay bye.

Baños is the theme park of the jungle. It's set at the base of an active volcano––the kind that actually looks like the volcanoes we see in movies; cone-shaped with smoke seeping from the top––and surrounded by the HUGEST MOUNTAINS EVER, which are covered in waterfalls, which are swarming with man-eating piranhas. It's a cool place.

Regan and I decided to be audacious and––despite all the robbery and kidnapping stories we'd heard––took a four-hour bus ride out to the much-aggrandised Baños for our last weekend together. Baños was totally worth the eight hours I spent envisioning what I'd do if robbers jumped onto the bus and demanded all our stuff. Yup.

Roasted guina pig anyone? If not, you can buy some taffy at one of the 5,695 taffy shops in town. Literally, ever other shop sells taffy.

After we'd explored the town a bit, we took a taxi cab around, stopping to view all the waterfalls that plunged into the furious river below. The mountains, swathed in jungle-green and brimming with birdcall, towered above us. I've never felt so small as I did gazing up and around me. They were just…so…big.

Oh. Also we jumped off a bridge. And I'm not talking your boring old jump-off-a-bridge-into-the-creek-to-cool-off kind of jumped-off-a-bridge. I'm talking we-stepped-off-a-bridge-and-plummeted-down-through-the-canyon-to-finally-hurtle-back-and-forth-over-the-crashing-rapids-below.

That kind of jumped-off-a-bridge.

We screamed and we laughed and we scream-laughed as our heart rates increased to astronomical speeds. I felt a deep, warm, honey-sweet feeling at having conquered something like that.

Our lives will never be the same.