banos and the ultimate gringo tour

We´ll start off by saying banos is an awesome place. sadly, when we woke up yesterday for our first full day, it was pouring. we had plans to do some hikes and what not, but the weather just didn´t seem to cooperate. so instead we spent the morning wandering around the town, visiting the cathedral, and checking out places to eat. we stumbled across a really cool, cooky little place called casa hood, and had their lunch special, which was amazing. banos has a reputation for being gringo land, and this restaurant certainly fit that description. the vibe was more like one yoúd find in a hippy town somewhere back in the states- but we´re ok with being on what some of the more snobby travelers refer to as the ´gringo trail´ since there´s a lot of good stuff to see on it.

after lunch we went to one of the hotsprings that has made banos so famous. it sits right below the waterfall in the town and made for a great setting. after that, we went back to casa hood because we saw they had a great happy hour special, and invited the irish couple we´ve been traveling with, and also an israeli couple that just finished their army service that we met on the bus to banos. everyone showed up and we had a great time hanging out with them for the rest of the evening.

this morning we woke up.. to more rain. i guess we can´t complain too much because we did come in the rainy season, but still, it was dissapointing. we decided to go try a coffee place that we heard is great, but they weren´t open so we decided to go next door. it was a bit too pricey for food so we decided just to get coffee.. the owner of the place is a cooky lady from a country in europe that we won´t identify to protect her privacy. she didn´t seem too happy that we didn´t try her food.. and kept telling us to try her sandwiches. later today we passed her near our hostel, and she was on the corner promoting her restaurant and her sandwiches to everone that passed by.. including us. there are definetly some strange people here.

after breakfast we decided to go on a chiva tour. imagine the tackiest bus you can and stick a bunch of gringos on it, with lights blaring and music playing. with the rain like it was, we didn´t have many other options of things to do. but for $8, it was awesome! they took us around to lots of other waterfalls in the area. we had a chance to bungee jump off a bridge, and although most of our group went, we passed on it. we did however take a ride on a cable car across a huge valley over the river. and although it was pretty frightening, it was also really cool.

we continued down the road, and actually ended up only about 10miles outside of puyo (considered the entry town to the amazon). but being only 10 miles from there was really neat, because the vegetation totally changed and was tropical and felt like we were in the rainforest. the last point on our tour took us to a huge waterfall. it was amazing. we hiked up to it and then actually behind the waterfall. it was beautiful and also scary since the water was so powerful, so hopefully our pictures of it come out. i say hopefully because the camera got pretty wet. but even if we lose all of our banos pictures, it our trip today was totally worth it.

luckily, we planned it perfectly because as we arrived back in banos, the sun came out.. so we were able to snap our last few shots without rain! since the sky cleared up, we´re thinking of doing the night chiva tour. it goes up to a lookout spot where you can usually see the volcano over banos spewing lava and we´ve heard great things.. so we figure for $3 if it stays clear, we´ll give it a shot.

that´s about all for now... its back to quito tomorrow!

mindy and ryan

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