The next morning we were headed to Banos - obviously the bus times in the lonely planet were wrong (as they always are) so instead of hanging around we hired a truck, this may sound grand but it wasn't: we were in the back of the truck! This brought us to the nearest town where we got a bus followed by another two and finally reached Banos.

After we got settled we went for a bit of a wander. We visited the nearby waterfall (the first of many) which was pretty nice and just wandered around town - we even managed to squeeze in time for an ice cream! It was Sunday - and the avid followers of my blog will remember that it can be hard to eat and impossible to drink in Ecuador on a Sunday - however this is not true for Banos there is no problem drinking. We managed to have a few beers and then went in search of food - this was a bit of a challenge but no fear in the end mama Ines saved us!

The following day we started by going to our hostels steam baths. It involved being locked in a box up to your neck (a bit like a magicians assistant) and then every 10 mins or so having cold water thrown on you in a number of different ways, first it was a cold wet towel for a few times, then a cold pool with a man splashing you, then a bucket of cold water and finally a high power hose! All good!It certainly left us feeling refreshed! In the afternoon we went on a nice picturesque walk - which again was a little tougher than we'd been led to believe(that's certainly putting it mildly - I wish people didn't lie so much so I could at least prepare - like maybe not wear flip flops) but again the troopers that we are we made it the whole way round the circuit. The highest point on the circuit was a lookout which would provide views of the local active volcano, Tungurahua (last erupted on Nov) - we struggled and fought our way to this lookout where we were treated to some fantastic, stunning views of clouds - yep just clouds with brief specs of volcano. Luckily enough on the walk back to Banos we did get some decent views of the volcano.

The next day on our very active holiday involved a bike ride - the road from Banos to Puyo has many waterfalls. So off we went on our hired bikes towards Puyo- the first few waterfalls were pretty nice. We stopped at one and got a cablecar across to get a better view - it was a rather scary cablecar experience but we did get some great views of the waterfall and the river as it travelled down the valley. We then made our way to what is considered the nicest waterfall on the route. We left the bike and walked the km (yeah right it was well more than that) to the waterfall - it was pretty stunning, it really roared and we even got to climb through a small cave to get behind the waterfall which was pretty cool and maybe a bit wet. After some lunch we returned to the bikes and carried on to the final waterfall where we were told we could swim. After walking down at least 1000 steps we got to the bottom where there was a waterfall and also gate and we weren't able to swim. Ah well only choice was to walk back up the 1000+ steps and head back. We of course opted to get a bus back to town as we didn't fancy doing the 30ish Kms uphill on the way back! To congratulate ourselves for a job well done we went out for a nice dinner and a couple of drinks! The next morning we got up nice and (read ridiculously) early to visit the hot baths - it was a nice refreshing start to the day! The baths were actually quite busy even though it was only 6am! After the lovely start we went to the market for breakfast - where I opted to have a set breakfast - the nice lady had chorizo and some fried potato thing - so I thought this was a reasonable breakfast - however it came on a loaded plate with rice, meat and salad too - probably the biggest breakfast I ever had!! This was our last day in Banos - from here we were headed to Riobamba - although I'd already been, there were other things to do and it was also a better location for me to start my hellish journey to Bolivia and the girls to get back to Quito.