The Banos Blowout

The next stop on our Ecuadorian adventure was the city of Banos. We arrived here knowing little about the city, other than knowing it was popular for its supreme natural beauty - it is a gateway in to the Amazon, and home to more than 80 waterfalls - the perfect place to take a tour of the jungle, or perhaps go white water rafting. Well...having just done both of those excursions rather spectacularly in Tena, we didn't feel they could be topped, so we settled in to have our own little Banos Blowout - sampling the restaurants and the drinks. Here we had pad thai, chicken wings, chai lattes, an obscene amount of rum, and sampled our first meat fondue (on Charlie's recommendation) which was amazing. On the night Dave got to chose where to eat we ended up at COMIC BURGER - a mix of two of his favourite hobbies - reading comic books and eating cheeseburgers.

Those Spanish speakers reading this will know that 'Banos' literally translates as Baths (and is also used as 'toilet'). Banos the city is home to some natural hot and cold baths, which Dave and I went to early one morning. We arrived at 5.30 and the queue for entry was already down the road! We were pleased with our tip to go early though, as the queue consisted mainly of Ecuadorian locals, and not tourists, which made it feel pretty authentic. The baths opened at 6am and in we piled. Everyone is made to buy a little hair cap, and in you go! The baths range from freezing cold to really hot - we couldn't bring ourselves to try the cold plunge pools at such a time in the morning, but settled in a warm one to watch the sunrise over the waterfall which was next to us. It was a beautiful experience.

After having spent a few days in Banos without really doing anything, we decided it was time we got up and went out. The boys were up for renting a little quad bikey type thing and bombing around the mountains in it, and I was quite keen to have a spa day - Banos is famous also for the massages and beauty treatments. So I booked in for the works - full body massage, manicure, facial and waxing - and then the boys rented a full on jeep with enough space for me in - so I got the best of both worlds!

We had intended to only be out with the jeep for an hour or two...but after attempting to get it up a hill and hearing the noise of the engine, it came to light that the jeep was a lot less fully equipped than advertised. With Charlie braving the Ecuadorian mountain roads, we made it to a mirador across the city and the mountains, where the vistas were beautiful. We then attempted to find our way to the next poorly signposted place - and ended up getting the thing well and truly stuck.

It took us the best part of an hour, a lot of engineering work - using boards of wood, mud, stones - anything we could find - NOT using the 4-wheel drive because (unsurprisingly) it didn't work - and a lot of positive thinking - we eventually got the vehicle unstuck, and raced back to the city so I could be back in time for my massage (and much needed manicure after that!).

The next day Charlie's friend from home, the lovely Deklan met us in the city and we rented bicycles and away we went on a tour of the waterfalls. We chose the worst morning to do this on - torrential rain making it difficult for us to see where we were going, and making landslides a real threat - we even crossed a rather perilous one with said bikes. Throughout the day we saw a number of waterfalls. The first, Manto de La Novia, which was once just one waterfall, but a huge storm caused a landslide which made a second one open up next to it (and destroyed a hotel which once sat below).  

The most spectacular one we saw was the end. After we had satiated ourselves with a cold beer overlooking the river (the rain had cleared by then), we trekked to the Palion del Diablo (cauldron of the devil) and were suitably stunned by the awesome power and speed and sheer amount of water gushing over the cliff edge. The noise of it filled our ears, the spray hit us all in the face, and we even crawled through damp rocks to have a glimpse behind the cascade too. Thoroughly impressive - and I have a great video which shows it, but unfortunately it's taken two hours just to upload this handful of pictures, so they will have to do!