Banos

So those of you who know spanish know what that Banos means bath, but it is also the name of a really cool city in Ecuador.

So we left the jungle and headed kind of up into the mountains to the city of Banos. Banos is somewhat of a touristy town, but it was still cool none the less. Banos is very near a volcano that is currently quite active, the last time that that city was completely evacuated was in 2006. So we were hoping to get a view of this volcano. It is also known for its hot baths (aka it name), really good hiking, and much more

We go into Banos, and found a place to stay, and then decided to head out and explore the city, there was all sorts of stuff to explore and all sorts of little shops. We found the local tourist center and got a map of the town and the local trails around. We decided to do what appeared to be a fairly short hike. well we started out an found what we thought was the trail. We start walking and it just gets steeper and steeper and the trail starts petering out. At times the only way that I can keep going up is grabbing hold of the plants and grass that is next to me and just hoping that they don't let loose.

Eventually we got to a spot that flattened out, found a road and then ended up on top of the hill at a big cross (where we wanted to be). There we found another awesome view of the city, the whole way up we had an awesome view of the city below us. After we got to the top we found the trail that lead down no problem and started back

We found these crazy looking trees. I so wouldn't want to run into one of them, yes those are like little spike coming out of it

We got up the next day and found ourselves some real coffee (it was hard to do here they often served you instant). We decided during coffee that we would do another hike and try to hike up and try to get a good view of the volcano, we hiked up a trail this time, the first part of it had like 650 steps to get to a statue of the virgin and then after that the trail just keeps going up and up.


There were really cool views the whole time, it was so green, tons and tons of different shades of green everywhere. We went up forever it seemed, we were looking for a small village the trail was supposed to lead us to. we ran into a very nice old man who lived up there who found my limited spanish quite funny, but we were still able to have a conversation even though he knew no english, he was nice enough to keep it simple so I could understand.
We realized that we had hiked above the village that we wanted to go to, but we still couldn't see the volcano because of the low clouds and fog, so we kept hiking in case it cleared up. We couldn't see it but we could hear it. Every now and then we would hear this rumbling off in the distance and it wasn't thunder
After a while we stopped and just enjoyed the view for awhile and sat in the sun, we then headed back down, this time taking the road and hooking up with a trail that took us back to town

By the time that we made it back we had hiked I don't even know how many miles we walked and lets just say the baths felt way good when we decided to go sit it them later.

The river that flows by Banos
A view of the old bridge from the new bridge
If it was clear you would be able to see the volcano we thought we saw a glow from it one night but weren't sure

After banos we hoped on a bus and took a bus ride on the highest paved road in ecuador, which lead us to the town of Gruanda where all we did was spend the night and then the following day we got on another bus and road it to the Guayaquil( the largest city in Ecuador) spent about 15 minutes in the bus station that was bigger than some airports, and then headed off to the beach