Banos

the waterfall overlooking banos

a local making taffy (their local brighton rock)

jude making her way to the top. If you look closely you'll see she isnt smiling!

Banos

At the top of the mountains. On the right is the active volcano....apparently!

After Tena, Jude and I jeed ourselves up for a bit of serious jungle escape, looking to go deep deep into the forest and live with indigenous people and be one with them, or some sort of prattle. So off we bounced (literally) on a 6 hour bus journey south to the last main town. We arrived in a very dusty nothing town with about 4 people there. With no map in LP we wandered off trying to find something close to a bed. With that accomplished (we’ll say no more about the room) we went off to find our trusty guide. With all but about 5 shops closed this didn’t take too long. Sadly after a very lengthy badly spoken Spanish chat it appears that there aren’t any ‘real’ indigenous people anymore, unless we’re prepared to travel for about a week (with chances of shrunken head still on the cards). Due to the deforestation and the encroaching cities, all that is left is villages that can’t live off the land due to lack of animals, who wear similar clothes to us, but go through the routines for tourists to show what a village is like. It’s a real shame that this is what its like, but as our guide kept saying, this is the evolution of the area, which is inevitable (this is what I guessed he said anyway!) So knowing that any jungle trip involving local people will be a farce, we hopped back onto the bouncing wagon to make our way to Banos.

At 3 hours from Quito it’s the most touristy place we’ve been to yet on our trip. Its like some strangle love child of bognor and breacon beacon. Beautifully lush green mountains and valleys swoop, dip and climb all around you with the town lit up like a Disney movie. Sadly in this idyllic place all you can hear are the loud rattling’s of motorbikes, quads and mini jeeps ripping up the paradise. So the only way from this tourist mess was up! Off we went on a trek up to the top of the valley to a looking point of the active volcano Tungurahua. This was no ordinary trek though…. Pretty much 45 degree straight up for 2 hours. Stupidly we forgot to put mossie spray on so after ten mins we’re sweating all over the place and attracting bugs, so we had to go quicker to get away from them only to make ourselves sweat more and attract more. If anyone had seen us, 2 white very sweaty people flaying there arms about crazily whilst running up a rocky steep path, whilst madly looking about themselves for any laying bugs, I’d have been interested what they thought!

Finally we made it to the open top so could take a breather for 30 mins and take in the sights. Very annoyingly it was quite cloudy by the time we got to the other side of the mountain, so after the arduous climb all we got for our troubles for a misty green mass. Hump!

I won’t prattle on any more, but the return trip involved getting lost with 2 german girls, being rescued by locals who took us through very high jungle overgrowth and in the ending taking longer to come down than it did to get up. We are both nursing sore calf muscles now!

But all`s good as we’re now by the beach….hurrar!!!!
Next blog will hopefully talk about whale watching, dry jungle trips and lovely white sandy beaches!