Settled into our lovely room in Plantos y Blancos hostel and hit the thermals springs. Spent a good few hours pickling ourselves in the outdoor pools including the super scalding pool which was so hot you could only stand to be in it for a few minutes and even then had to keep completely still for fear of burnage. This was followed by a sudden dip in the icy cold plunge pool! After a few times, we got quite expert at it and were in and out like veritable yo-yos.

As if spending hours every day in the mineral enriched pools wasn't enough, we also endulged in our first ever hot stone massage which was amazing with lumps of piping hot lava rock on your skin and had a daily 'health steam bath' at our hostel.

This was a bit weird at first. Basically in involves sitting in a funny wooden box with your head poking out while the box fills with steam and smelly leaves for a few minutes, then you get out and wipe yourself down with a cold flannel. Repeat five times. Next up the guy makes you sit down in a trough of cold water, splashes you with more cold water and massages your stomach in a firm circular motion...to loosen your bowels, apparently. Finally its back in the box for a couple more time before he finishes your 'bath' off by hosing you down with a freezing cold hi-powered jet-spray. It is quite the experience, and really quite nice, especially once you got used to the fact that the bath guy doubled up as the maintenance man for the hostel and was a tad free and easy with his hands! And we both felt pretty good afterwards despite warnings that we might feel a bit dodge as all the toxins ooozed out of our skin.

Had a wicked day hiring quad bikes to bomb down the Avenue of Cascades where we admired, well, a lot of waterfalls! The bikes were fab and the road was quite off roady and had us driving through waterfalls and dark tunnels. Parked up a couple of times for a closer look including a fairly terrifying trip across a ravine in a metal basket contraption and a knackering kilometre hike down to the bottom of the valley to see Ecuador's most famous fall which drops down a huge hole in the volcanic rock and is pretty impressive close up!

Did Ozzy Osbourne a little bit more proud on the way back with a touch more gas....although poor Tim ended up with a sorry looking two toned shoe after the oil pipe popped off!

Had a couple of lovely meals out including a great Italian and an even greater Argie meat feast...the best we've had since leaving Buenos...with sausage tasters, slices of pork and slivers of steak cooked to perfection! Plus we sampled Banos' local treats of sugar cane chewy taffy type thing which is stretched out on hooks on the street and sucked on raw sugar cane! Just what the dentist ordered!

Despite all our good health work, we had one heavy night out with a couple of lads we met in one of the local bars and ended up partying until 5am! Sadly we missed our morning steam bath and spent the rest of the day hiding in our room.

Pickled and wrinkled, we finally left Banos heading further north towards the capital city....Quito.