Field Trip

The pastors invited the congregation to Rio Verde.  We were to meet in front of the church on Saturday (11/27/10) at 8:30am.  We arrived at 8:30am.  There were no people.  There was no bus.  We were perplexed.  We wandered down the street and saw Fabiola in the driveway of the compound.  She expressed concern that we had not called her for anything as of late, then she pointed out the bus behind the church.  Two hours later we had descended over 7,000 feet, passed through the touristy-town of Banos, and found ourselves in a small village alongside Rio Verde.

There the church members gathered, sang a couple of religious songs (the only song I could have remembered was, I am a C, I am a C-H, I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N...), an English woman named Lindy provided a brief message on her experience as an adult who received baptism, the adults who came to be baptized in the river expressed their testimony to God, and then they were baptized.

There were two distinct sections of the river.  One involved climbing over and on-top of enormous rocks down into the water.  The other required walking down a sand-like dune into the water.  Guess which one the pastors' chose?

Here is the first baptism.  Pastor Guillermo is on the left.  Pastor Juan Pablo (the keyboardist and soloist) is on the right.

The second individual, a woman whom we chatted with later in the day.  Her daughter is learning English. 

The pastors praying after the fact.  Guillermo's tee-shirt has an image of bloody, whipping marks down Jesus' back.  The shirt states, "Read between the Lines."

Getting some fresh air pre-baptisms.

Afterward the group split up to hang out as they pleased.  Andy and I went with Guillermo, his wife, and the English-speaking missionaries to do, what could aptly be named, The Jungle Walk, which culminated in the Pailon del Diablo (the Devil's Cauldron) Waterfall.

Here is the boa-constrictor.  You can pay $2 to wear it and have a picture taken with your camera.  You can pay $3, and they'll take a photo of you and hand it to you.  With my long-time fear of snakes and having just seen Nagini in Harry Potter 7, this photo is as close as I wanted to come.  (Those are Pastor Guillermo's legs).

The entry to the 1 km hike down to the waterfall.

Me on the path down.  It was basically built-in stairs the whole way down.  My calves were wobbling in no-time.  Also, I checked the trees overhead for any unwelcome animals.

A pretty nifty rock formation.  You can tell how far down we've walked because the entrance to the path is above that rock.

This is the bridge we crossed to get a view of the waterfall.  It has a maximum of five people at a time.  As a suspension bridge, it swayed, creaked, and felt entirely likely that your foot just might go through.  Pastor Guillermo, who walked behind me, said if I fell through he would pray for me.

 The waterfall.  Andy took the shot on the bridge.

For $2.00 we paid to climb up alongside the waterfall.

Then, we climbed up and went behind the waterfall.  There was no cave or anything, we just stood behind the cascade.  To get there, we had to crawl on our hands and feet between a 2.5 foot crack in the rock up for about 100 feet.  It's as close to shimmying on my belly as I'll ever get. 

This is me coming down from behind the falls.

This photo's from that high.  You can see the bridge we crossed down below.

We were that close.

This is a shot of the part of the town we were in.

The name of this volcano is Tungurahua, which is also the name of the province we reside in.  It has been active since 1999.  It has had major eruptions on August 16, 2006, February 6, 2008, and May 28, 2010.  Check out wikipedia for more information.  Anyway, yes that is a smoking volcano and Rio Verde is just past the base of it.