Tuesday 10 September - Thursday 12 September

Banos, Ecuador

From Quito we headed three hours south by bus to the small but lively town of Banos, neatly nestled between the Pastaza River and Tungurahua volcano. Adventure tour companies abound here with loads of outdoor activities to keep one busy. After a night of resting up in our private dorm we hired mountain bikes and headed down the waterfall trail on the road to Puyo, our destination being the town of Rio Verde and the El Pailon del Diablo. A mostly downhill ride for about 17 kms along winding mountain roads passing through and around short tunnels and stopping, very often, for pictures of the many cascadas. All along this route you can stop off and zip across the river on a zip-line or tarabita (small dodgy looking cable car) or bridge jump over the gorge. Once in Rio Verde we parked the not so tired bikes and descended about 15 minutes down a trail to the amazingly powerful and stunning base of El Pailon del Diablo - the Devil's Cauldron. Some carefully constructed stone pathways and platforms get you incredibly close to the raging water and with a bit of crawling and belly tucking you can get in behind it. Needless to say rain jackets were priceless although not fully sufficient. With the cameras screaming for a break, we headed back up the trail for lunch, a cold one and the lazy way back to Banos....in the back of a truck, bikes n all.

Banos is popular for its local thermal baths (hence the name, Banos, meaning bathrooms) and the public one next to our hostel was only about 3 dollars, so our evening plans were already sorted. Banos de la Virgen is at the base of the Manto de la Virgen waterfalls which makes for an idyllic setting to spend an evening soaking your aching muscles in warm human soup.

With us due to leave Banos the next morning, we didn't cement any plans or activities but at breakfast we bumped into our travel pals, Janne and Merja, again. After some good catch up time and travel updates we ended up being convinced to stay for the day and only leave that night, so that we could take a bike ride with them on the same route as yesterday but this time all the way to Puyo where you could apparently get an elevated view down to the Amazon basin.
So back in the saddle and off we freewheeled. About 8hrs and 65 kms later and a lot more challenging uphills than we had expected we finally arrived in Puyo - tired, hungry, with sore butts and a little disappointed in the dirty town we encountered. With not much to do, see or eat here we hopped on a bus back to Banos - bikes and all. We did however get to see what must have been the start of the Amazon basin, from Ecuador, obviously.

Back at the hostel Janne and I thought a beer in a steam bath sounded best for recovery. Janne's attempt to convince our bather that beers whilst in steam baths was perfectly healthy in Finland, was doing squat here in Ecuador. We had to settle for bath first, beer after. Outraged!
One thing left to do after showering, bathing, drinking, grazing and drinking was for Dons and I to go catch that last bus to Guayaquil. Simple enough, having already previously checked the bus times and our choice was the 22:30 one. Wrong! When we rushed to the bus station at about 22:15 there was hardly a light on. Everything was shut and not a single bus in sight. Oops! A random guy at the gate suggested we wait on the side of the road for a passing bus that was headed to Ambato. It wasn't looking good, but we decided to wait it out on the side of the dark road when at 23:15 a lone bus finally turned up headed for Ambato. We were so lucky as we were the only passengers on board and by the time we got to Ambato the driver and his assistant seemed to have forgotten about us and were surprised to find us still waiting to be dropped off at the terminal where we managed to hop onto the last shady looking bus to Guayaquil. Phew.