Canyoning, is that even a thing?!?!

As I mentioned previously, the two big reasons to come to Banos is thermal baths and adventure sports, so we planned a day of both.
Local Ecuadorians wake at the crack of dawn, and trudge up to El Saltado, one of a handful of baths around town. So when in Banos, do as the Banosians?, Banosense?, a flock of Banosi?, do as people from Banos do.

Just letting those medicinal properties soak on in...

Though we had packed pretty well, but missed the bath cap requirement for thermal baths memo, so had to rent, yup, rent bath caps... so a few hundred locals had wore the cap previously, the bath is medicinal, so our heads will be fine, right?

Heather was totally comfortable with the co-ed showers...

We have done our fair share of fairly gnarly adventure activities (see last year's Borneo Via Ferrata entry), and had never heard of canyoning..
From what we pieced together, you take a few random jungle waterfalls, a dash of ropes and a carbiner, a splash of adrenaline seeking western clowns willing to risk life and limb, shake briskly and voila... the new and utter ridiculous "sport" of canyoning.

The general plan was drive out into the jungle, conduct a light introduction with some small waterfalls, jumping and such, then hit a series of increasing larger falls, finally floating down stream to be picked up later in the day.

Heather was fearless as we navigated across the perilless rocks...

The first major waterfall was fantastic fun, first rappelling, then zip-lining down the 100 ft drop, Heather first, then me.

Heather with the rest of the crew... Hans (from Dominican Republic, Jakob from Germany, Andy our Aussie buddy, Katie from NorCal and another German girl.

This is where things went seriously sideways... in Canyoning, once you start down the series of waterfalls, there is only one way out... finish all the waterfalls... you can't decide after 2 waterfalls to bail out.

Well apparently, the Ecuadorian weather, specifically the unscheduled late morning torrential downpour, did not receive the memo.
As the group finished the second fall, it started to rain... HARD and within minutes, the water level started to rise to the point where we could not safely navigate the rest of the falls (read, the way OUT).

Our choices were limited,
option #1 : sit in river and CERTAINLY wash away and drown, OR
option #2 : navigate falls and TRY not to wash away and drown.
Heather kept calm & cool, crushing the dangerous rappel down...
A view from the top...

And a view from the bottom... Heather mid rappel... thankfully the waterfall was too loud and it drowned out her screams.

It took quite a while to get down this 3rd fall, and it continued to rain HARD... the last set of falls were out of the question, we would have to work our way up and out through the jungle.
Heather's face says it all... "Seriously Riad, put the camera DOWN?!?!"

After a couple of hours of the gnarliest jungle hiking, (and I use the word hiking loosely as we had to rope in together, several times having to human ladder / pull one another up shear mud slicked trails), we finally repelled down to a nearby highway.
The rains had come so fast and hard, it caused a landslide on to the road...

Our two guides, Mihaldo and Marcelo are heroes... they were a study in patience, working the problem and getting all of us out alive and uninjured, no small feat.

Mihaldo and I experiencing the bliss of being out and in one piece.