After my fun time in Mindo I headed to another centre for adventure sports, Banos, in the southern part of the Ecuador. I spent three days there enjoying the outdoors as well as the natural hot springs. Banos is a lovely town of about 15,000. It sits in a valley surrounded by volcanoes and mountains. Some of the volcanoes are still active including Tungurahua which erupted again on February 1 while I was in the Galapagos. There was no sign of that though when I arrived. The proximity of the volcanoes though is the source for the hot springs.
On my first day I wanted to get a better view of the town from one of the surrounding hills. Following an hour long steep uphill climb I was rewarded with a lovely view. It took a bit of waiting through as the clouds needed to clear. I’ve decided it really is not fun doing hard physical exercise in the middle of a cloud – you get soaking wet and it is hard to breath.
The climb up to Bellavista view point
My view on the way up – path down to the left, Banos in front
Banos
Banos with the mountains
After my hard labours I checked myself into one of the many many spas for an afternoon of pampering. I got scrubbed down with a mixture of volcanic ash and salt from head to foot which scraped off a few layers of dead, sunburned skin. Following this rejuvenation I was detoxified using “longevity mud” which they called a magic hug. Supposedly it adds years to your life. Finished off with a facial and pedicure (I returned to my traditional bright blue polish), I was ready to melt away into a puddle of relaxed goo.
In wandering around town I found a bridge across the river gorge. One of the activities you can do is jumping off the bridge. It is like bungie jumping except without the bounce. I stood and watched for a while and noticed that if you get up on the platform and hesitate too long they push you off! Definitely not something I need to do in this lifetime!
The river gorge with the bridge
Crazy people jumping off!
The next day I got up bright and early to go canyoning. This involved donning a wet suit and rappelling down a series of waterfalls on the Rio Blanco outside of town. Before we went up to the waterfalls we had some training with our guides. When he described that we would zip line down one waterfall I was really not happy given my experience in Mindo. He told me later he actually thought I was going to be a problem I was so nervous at the start. Turns out it was no problem and so much fun!! Because you are rappelling you go down backwards and don’t actually see where you are going. Taking it slow and steady I had no issues. Also, I was with a group of 4 guys (not many women seem to do these things) and turns out that makes all the difference. It is so much easier if you can see some else go down first and survive!
Here I go!
Watch out below!
Look ma no hands!
Sliding down a waterfall
We survived!
When I was returning from the Amazon, I met a group of American’s from another lodge who were on the same flight. I became friendly with one of the guys, Vangelis. He has been my companion for the past few days in Banos. He joined me in the afternoon for a massage and then we hit the hot springs outside of town. Such a lovely relaxing time. Because it was the weekend the pools were very busy with local families enjoying the smelly heat!
Hot springs
The hot pool full of lovely healthy minerals.
To top off our hedonistic afternoon we had a lovely dinner at the local steak house (I had pasta!). Because this past weekend was elections for the regional governments none of the restaurants and bars were allowed to sell alcohol from Friday through Sunday. Luckily some of the restaurants ignored this in the case of foreigners as we are obviously not part of the election excitement.
Vangelis enjoying his steak on a stone
Next morning we signed up for more adrenaline to go rafting! The agency we were going with was the gathering point in the morning. On the large TV they had the Canada – Sweden hockey game playing which was very exciting. Unfortunately as I was watching, I didn’t notice a woman snatch my phone from my pocket. Luckily one of the guides did see and reacted quickly and tackled her before she could leave the store. Though she kept saying it was her phone when he showed it to me it was obviously mine (the screen has a picture of Eric and I on it!). Someone got the police to come and they took all the information about what happened. They took the woman and a young man who was with her into custody and we headed off rafting. I was very lucky that I got my phone back thanks to the quick response of the guide at the company. I was so thankful to them.
After that dramatic start to the day, rafting had something to really live up to and it definitely did. We did about 16 Class 3 and 4 rapids (which means they are pretty hard as the scale goes from 1-5) on the Rio Patate. I went rafting about 15 years ago on the Ottawa River which was much smaller and we had a much larger group and boat of 12 people. We were 5 intrepid adventurers the other day along with our fantastic, insane guide. I got dumped from the boat but was quickly pulled back in by the others thankfully.
Adventurer hoy!
Off we go
Splish splash…
Oh off I start to go (left side)
And I’m in!
Safely back on board!
Oops now we go backwards for the last rapids.
After rafting it was time to just chill and wander the town a bit. It is a very gringo town with lots of expats living there and lots of visitors. The main street is full of both souvenir shops and adventure tour companies. I did spot roasting guinea pigs at the market though!
Roasted guinea pigs
Banos was a lot of fun and there was much more I could have done there. This will definitely be on my places to return to (topped of course by the Galapagos Islands). Yesterday Vangelis and I hopped the bus for the long trek from Banos south to Cuenca which I will tell you more about when I’ve had a chance to explore a bit!