One of the "features" of the Waterfall Route is that there are several tunnels and bridges. From a pair of these bridges, about halfway through the bikeride, you can get off your bicycles and do what Ecuadorians call "puenting." Puente means "bridge," thusly, puent-ING means "bridging," which makes no sense grammatically but means bridge-jumping. Puenting works in one of two ways. Usually there are two bridges very close to each other (one for traffic one way and one for traffic the other, for example). One option is to jump from the lower bridge (34 m or ~110 ft) while you swing - like a swing - from a rope attached to the higher bridge (45 m or ~155 ft). That's the wussy way (sorry Ashley and Amelia). The varones way (macho-man way) is to jump Superman-style from the higher bridge. The way this works is, your rope is tied under the bridge you are on to the other side. When you jump off, you dive head first and swing under the bridge you were just standing on. It's scarier than... well, most things anyways.
I was the first one of our group to go and I Supermanned - like a champion... almost. Story: When we arrived at the puenting site, no one was presently jumping. From our group, I was the only one willing to go first (surprise!) so I got all harnessed up. The guys asked me if I wanted to Superman and, since I hadn't really thought about it (I didn't know it was going to be an option), I said I wasn't really sure. So, they told me to go to the other bridge where I would jump from. Now... I have explained to you all how this whole bridge-jumping thing works, but I didn't know how it worked and neither did anyone in my group and it didn't help that the only people who could explain it to us spoke only Spanish. (It never does help). So, as I hiked up to the higher bridge, I was unaware that I was hiking to my imminent dive - rather than swing - off of a bridge. Short story long, as I walked up to the bridge a big group of people arrived to wait to go jumping. When I got to the jumping spot the assisted-suicide, bridge-jumping assistant man asked me if I was ready to Superman. I was quite surprised not to be offered both options, so I asked, "What about regular puenting?" He said, "Well, you'll have to go to the other bridge for that." I wasn't really sure what to do, because we didn't get to watch anyone else jump first, and I wasn't really ready to dive off a bridge attached only to a rope or two before I saw anyone else do it. But by this time, all my friends and the group of people who had arrived were watching me, waiting for me to dive to my demise. So, after getting up and down from the bridge's railing two times, asking the bridge dude if he was sure I wasn't going to die about fifty times, and getting the crowd to cheer for me, I dove off the bridge. It was exhilarating to say the least.
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