Time for a Banos

With a few days to explore Ecuador before we move onto the next part of our trip North America, we decided to visit Banos, apparently the next busiest tourist destination in Ecuador after the Galapagos islands!!

Banos is about 3 hours (actually about 4) from Quito on a bus and is situated high up in the hills at the bottom of several active volcanoes. Its called Banos because the town has several natural spas and waterfalls. Its also famous for outdoor pursuits and partying, sounds like we wouldn't like it!!

We arrived at around 3ish and spent the rest of the day wandering around and getting to know our new environment, it was very quiet but looked like the next few days would be fun. First we decided to pay the 4 dollars each to get taken up a mountain to see what was rather optimistically called "Volcano eruption at 9pm". Now being slightly wary that volcanoes might be a little more unpredictable than that, we got on our converted milk float (bus from the agency) to wind our way up the mountain to see the spectacle. Waste of time and money does not even cover what happened for the next few hours. We were basically driven up the hill while being played soft rock and dropped off at the "viewing point", basically a foggy hill with a bonfire on it. The "Guide" was straight out of the Ali G school of English. For anyone reading this DONT do it as its a waste of time and money. Just in case anyone was wondering what happened to the volcano it was apparently about another 10k in the distance and seeing as it was foggy and i couldn't even see Mel who was 5 metres in front of me to say we didn't have the best view would be an understatement!

Anyway we settled down to a good nights sleep and decided the itinerary for the next day, 4 hours horse riding up and down one of the mountains followed by a dip in one of the many natural spas.

We turned up at the agency with a certain amount of trepidation especially since neither me or Mel are known as horse whispers, the nearest i think we have gotten before was probably the donkeys on Blackpool beach! Anyway we were driven up the hill and met our steads for the day, mine was rather worryingly called Saddam Hussein and Mel´s was Leonardo. But surprisingly for both of us everything seemed to be going well, the horses were behaving and the view up the mountain was spectacular although Mels horse was a little lazy and seemed more interested in the grass than the hill.

After making it to the top of the mountain and eating very tasty sandwiches it was time to take a different route down that was very, very steep. My horse unsurprisingly didn't like the idea of carrying me down a steep slope (who would) and manged to protest at every opportunity and at one point refused to move another inch only some "encouragement" from guide got him to shift the rest of the way down the hill. So we made it to the bottom, eventually and had a really nice time doing it. Mel even muttered something about having riding lessons when back in the UK. It was a very enjoyable way to spend 4 hours with a guide who didn't speak English and 2 horses!!

Onto the second part of the day a well earned soak in the natural springs. These aren't just any springs, one pool is heated to over 50 degrees by the volcano and the other is cooled to something around brrrr by the Waterfall that is next to the baths. Very soothing on our saddle-sore bums.

Anyway that was pretty much the end of our couple of days in Banos apart from the usual bars, crazy food and early start to get the bus back to Quito.

Photos to follow, damn Internet cafe