Baños

From Casa Del Suiza, Erin and I returned to Tena, to then take another bus to Banos. Again, between Tena and Puyo (another large city in the rainforest) the road was completely unpaved, and a little wider than my drive way. However, the drive from Puyo to Banos was gorgeous, overlooking luscious green hills dropping down into a river as we steadily climbed back into the Andes. Banos lived up to its reputation as a great place to escape from Quito (it is only about 3.5 hours away). The scenery was stunning, green hills, a huge waterfall right outside our hotel, and tons of outdoor opportunities. Also, the town had more hotels, restaurants, and tour agencies per block than I would have thought was possibly sustainable. You pretty much couldn’t walk a block without seeing one of each, and often more.

We chose a slightly pricier hotel (still dirt cheap by US standards) because it listed squash, tennis, and indoor soccer, and we thought it would be great to be active, especially not being that active and eating a ton in the jungle. However, being Ecuador, it turned out that the indoor soccer and the tennis court were one and the same, meaning that the tennis court was almost completely destroyed. The squash court looked great, but it turned out that two out of their three rackets and the ball were broken. Oh well.

Still, we get to do some other great activities. On the second day Erin and I took a 4 hour horse ride (my first time really riding a horse) up and down part of the volcano overlooking Banos. It was really fun, especially the parts when I was less afraid I was going to die (as the horse descended down a fairly treacherous trail), but I have almost never been that sore in my life. I think I was mostly out of commission for 4 days, and that was including after a 1 hour massage. Nonetheless, we also got to do some great hiking and exploring, even though the weather wasn’t great (interestingly it seemed to rain more in Banos than the rainforest, who would have thought). We also discovered some incredible cafes that I would love to bring back to the states, where we spent most of our time when we weren’t outside.

Finally, on the 29th we returned back to Quito. The bus ride back was perhaps the scariest I have had yet, with the bus driver flying around cars and cliff edges at a speed that I wouldn’t be comfortable with in my car, let alone in a bus. Luckily we survived, and it even got a little better after Erin told the bus driver she was afraid she was going to die. Can’t say that I am thrilled to be back in the dirty city, on my second day back I was hit in the face with a black cloud of pollution from a truck that probably lasted 15 seconds. Hopefully we will be traveling again soon!