Since Friday the 11th July, after taking the 3hr bus ride from Quito we have been staying in Banos.

Banos is a great place and quite a tourist hub as it close to hikes, rivers, waterfalls, mountains and a volcano.

On Friday we arrived in the evening so simply found our hotel (le jardin de Marianne) and I went to bed.

Our hotel is lovely - for $55 we have separate rooms for three nights.

The rooms are on the third floor with views over rooftops and the mountains and outside on the balcony is a hammock for lazy afternoons.

On Saturday we mooched around town and dropped off our laundry and then we booked to go river rafting in the afternoon.

River rafting was amazing! After an hours drive to the river in an open sided party bus (seriously), we changed into our gear and had safety and paddle training.

The river was a grade 3-4 and we were told we could tip in so needed to know how to be rescued and how to rescue (big gulp!).

This scared me and I opted to go in a raft with girls who wanted to take a less aggressive route down the river!

Once we climbed into the raft the group of five rafts all headed out.

Within the first minute two rafts had flipped and we got to put our reduce training into real life as we pulled one
of the guys aboard before transferring him back to his raft.

The river was very choppy at times and on two occasions we had to take the emergency position of kneeling in the raft with paddles up to try and not flip.

At one point the front of our raft reared up so high that we almost went over though thankfully we managed to ride the killer wave out and all stay in.

The rafting last about an hour and after a long and cold ride back we grabbed a shower and some dinner before heading to bed.

On Sunday we had a much needed lazy day just pottering around town, shopping and sleeping.

For dinner we went to a Swiss Bistro which served amazing fish and then had an early night.

On Monday morning I woke up early and heard a huge explosion which was closely followed by hotel shaking.

I did a quick mental check and ruled out a bomb (Ecuador isn't at war as far as I know). I later found out that it was the local volcano erupting and letting off steam - how amazing!!!!

Monday we had planned to go mountain biking but it rained all night and was still raining in the morning so we decided to drop some laundry off and mooch around town again to see if the weather would clear.

Ian introduced me to a fantastic coffee and chocolate shop he had found and I had the best mocha coffee I've ever had.

I bought some local Ecuadorian chocolate to take home (I hope it makes it home