The town of Banos is an adrenaline junkies haven. I’ve not seen so many rafting, climbing, jumping and nature defying tour companies in the one small town. It’s a tourist town for sure, but like so many tourist towns in Ecuador it’s filled mostly with South American (predominately Argentinian) tourists and a handful of gringos.

The bus arrived late at night when I arrived with the Dutch the girl, Merel. She’d organised her Amazon tour from here and had spent a couple of nights, so we headed to the hostal ‘Plants and White’ – an odd name to call anything – where she had stayed previously. It was  pretty cool hostal with a common area on the roof that cooked a fine breakfast. It was also the first dorm I stayed in for 3 nights, sharing it with Merel and a crazy Canadian that lived off adrenaline and who was determined to jump off a bridge before he left. 

Aside from the nature sports, there was some amazing hiking around the mountains and you could even hire a sand buggy to drive around town. I’ve got to say, I was extremely tempted to hire one of these buggies and take a stab at driving for the first time in, oh lets see, almost 20 years! How hard could it have been!

In terms of activities I really didn’t do a lot. I attempted one of the hiking trails, but with a cut up big toe I had to turn back as putting pressure on it became too painful, and I really want this stupid toe to hurry up and heal. Of course when you’re on holiday you don’t just want to put your feet up and relax, so I’ve been aggravating it thinking to myself everytime “oh yeah, it’ll be right, I’ll just climb up here and it won’t hurt”. Silly gringo.

One relaxing area I did stop at for a while was a waterfall that apparently is bless by the virgin Mary. In fact Mary seems to be a hell of a lot more popular than Jesus, she definitely wins the tally in statues and carvings. The waterfall has Marry engraved in the stone, and you can bring plastic bottles to fill up with water to drink. The water also flows into a pool area where the locals swim in for a fee and promise they washed beforehand. Some locals forgo this and bath directly in the waterfall instead – whether they’re allowed to do this, I have no idea, but it does raise questions about drinking the water below!

The day I left for Riobamba to check out whether this Devils Nose train was running, I was waiting at the bus terminal and it turns out several of the people from the hostal were also leaving on the same bus. Many of them were headed straight to Cuenca, including Merel,, but I was the only one bound for Riobamba. Half of them played musical instruments, so the bus had a rustic concert playing at the back as we headed out.

This is where I met Dev and Lissa. They ended up getting off at Riobamba too, as Dev had left his day bag back at the Banos bus terminal as he was too busy playing music. He’d lost his wallet and passport because of this small oversight. Once we arrived in Riobamba and caught a taxi together into town, they headed to an internet cafe to call his bank and the Canadian embassy, so we parted ways and I found a place to stay the night.

The next day I jumped on a bus to Cuenca. I’d given up on the Devils Nose train. It was certainly not running from Riobamba as indicated by the train tracks being ripped up, and there was a lot of confusion where it was running from and whether it was the stream engine or yellow Disney bus. And I’ve got to say, arriving in Cuenca that night I was happy with that decision. Immediately I knew this was a town I could stay in for a while. 

As you tend to do, you bump back into the people you have met before. The next morning, sitting in a cafe having breakfast, Dev and Lissa wander in. We’ve been cruising around Cuenca together for almost a week now. 

But Cuenca is a new post all for it’s own. This place is amazing and I’ll be spending another week here as Dev and I are doing a Spanish course, which includes cooking and salsa dancing! Not bad, and a perfect town to do it in.

More pics of Banos here!