Banos, amazing Banos

Decided to cut the Quilitoa Loop short, as it left me time to visit Banos, the playground of Ecuador. What a gorgeous little town, even if as suffers life under an active volcano (Tungurahua). The town is full of ethnic restaurants (I ate Thai, Arabic and Italian while I was there), at minimum 100 hostals and enough action sport shops to fill a big city.

I opted for canyoning (a first), hiking and mountain biking. The company we used (GeoTours) was very professional and we easily got our $$$ worth. The guides were funny, a little crazy and extremely safety conscious. The canyoning involved some tight jumps into little pools (ie 20 ft), then bouldering across to a 40 ft zipline. We also did a number of rappells. It was a great day and we all enjoyed a big group meal after.


Day 2, the volcano was spitting ash like nothing else, so I hiked up the mountain across the way to get some clean air and a better view of the town and volcano. Of course, Banos means baths, so the evenings were spent in the town´s hot spa pools before heading off to some fancy dinner (ie¨$5 meal)




The next day, a few of us took mountains bikes and headed downhill from Banos (went 35 km, by peddaling about 10. Hitch-hiked on a truck to get back. We stopped in at the El Diablo waterfall. It was shocking. The force of the water was truly quite amazing (don´t know if video will show and cafe PC will not run Flash)

Yesterday was a quiet day with some shopping, a nice lunch with Artesia from Thailand and a little hike up the mountain to watch the volcano do it´s thing. Karin has some night pics of the lava flow, which I´ll post in a few day.

Realistically, Banos was like a vacation inside a vacation. Normal backpacking rules did not apply for a few day. Didn´t make any meals, spent money of guides and sports gear and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Stayed in a great hostal (Plantas y Blanco) and made lots of new Facebook buddies. So many people on these long trips. Met a few who have been out there as long as I was...yet they are not run down.

I just may have to attribute my exhaustion in the Spring to an aging body not keeping up with my desire to see new things and meet new people