Ecuador: Banos

We weren't planning on going to Banos, but we had quite a few people mention what a cool spot it was, and we're glad they did. The town is nestled right below Volcano Tungurahua, which is one of the 8 active volcanoes in Ecuador. There has been quite a bit of activity since 1999, and on occasion the entire town has had to evacuate. While we were there the volcano just so happened to be letting off a bit of steam, yes, it made me nervous.

Take a closer look....it may look like clouds, but it's not...it was billowing steam from a volcano, crazy!

And here is part of Banos...

This man was awesome! I tried my best to get a photo without him noticing; hence the reason it's blurry. We wanted to be friends with him, but he looked like he was on a mission.

Puppet anyone? I guess they're technically not puppets, but that's what everyone there called them. Right after Christmas these "puppets" appear everywhere to begin getting ready for the new year celebration. Some people buy puppets and some people make their own puppets. We saw some older kids making a huge puppet that looked like it should have been on a float, it was massive!

I'm sure you're now wondering what everyone does with these puppets. Well, right after the stroke of twelve midnight on December 31st, everyone kicks their puppet into a pile and lights it on fire. There are huge piles of burning puppets everywhere!!! Such an interesting new year's tradition.

And some people wear these masks to help them ring in the new year

One of the major draws in Banos is the hot spings...hence the name of the town is Banos (baths). I had been to hot springs before in New Zealand and in Hungary, but it was Brian's first time experiencing the amazing-ness of natural hot springs. He fell in love immediately!

The next day we fueled ourselves with a big breakfast and headed out for our 6 hour hike to get an up close look at the volcano.

Have you ever been on a hike in Ecuador? Well, if you have then you will know that it is very easy to get lost! At some crossroads there will be signs and at others there won't be. Even if there is a sign you can't always tell which direction the arrow is pointing. By the time we got to this first lookout point we had already taken a 45 minute to 1 hour detour. We were sweaty and exhausted with hours more to go...so we continued.

A few hours into the hike we were even more exhausted...

Oh good, just in case the volcano decides to start spewing lava we know which direction to run!

We passed through a lot of farmland on our hike.

We were almost to the volcano...

when we came across these men...they told us since the cloud cover had already come in for the day that it would be impossible for us to see the volcano...noooooooooooooooooo!

With that said, we headed back to Banos.

And came across some red ants.

Almost there, almost there!

These stairs were gnarly! Poor Brian and his bad knees...

We got back to town about 6 hours later completely exhausted! We were going to head straight to the hot springs to relax and shower before our 10 p.m. night bus to Guayaquil when we ran into some friends we had made earlier in the trip. We were told we had to rent a dune buggy and go explore the waterfalls on the road to Puyo....so we did. The sun was on its way down so we were only able to rent the buggy for an hour and a half, and we had a blast! We would have loved to have had more time to actually go explore the waterfalls instead of pulling off the road, taking a photo, and moving on to the next one.

Here we are in our dune buggy about to get going. Don't be fooled, you don't just drive these things through town....you drive them on a highway! No joke. It would be the same if someone came to visit Santa Cruz and we put them on Highway 17 in a dune buggy and told them to enjoy the views...you would never even think to do that, right? Well in Ecuador they do :-)

Maybe you need some videos to get the full effect...

Oh ya, and there were dark tunnels...

And if you'll notice we only had one side mirror...

Our time was running out fast and it was almost dark at this point, so we decided it was time to book it back to town. Brian was driving at the time and we had just come around a corner when out of no where our buggy stopped shifting! It wouldn't do anything. Mind you this is on a highway with semi-trucks and huge buses that are constantly passing each other. Thank God no one was behind us! Brian jumped out of the buggy, yelled to me to get in the driver seat and crank the wheel to the left, and he pushed the buggy to the other side of the freeway. I'm glad I'm married to a quick thinker because he got us out of there just in time. There was no turnout anywhere near us, so we had the buggy up against the railing and it was still partially in the road.

I stood there waving cars and trucks around him so that he could try to fix the problem, but it still wasn't working. By the way, it was pitch black by this time. The only time we could see anything was when a car drove by. Luckily, Brian had his cell phone on him and remembered that the guy we rented it from had given him a business card. He called and he got through, which was a miracle in itself because we had tried making calls earlier in the trip and they never worked. In his best Spanish he told the man what happened and supposedly someone was coming to get us. Half hour later two guys showed up. We figured out that it wasn't a problem with the gears, but that the chain had broken and fallen off and we ended up finding it in the middle of the street where the buggy stopped.

The whole thing was a bit terrifying, but it was also quite the adventure. We ended up making it back to town with time to relax in the hot springs one more time!

And look who we ran into on our way to the bus station later that night....our friends Sue and Thompson who we met and hung out with in Cotopaxi. Hi guys!!!