Banos

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Banos... another place we thought we would spend a day in and ended up staying four days. It is a lovely town nestled in the mountains and surrounded on all sides by lush green hills. Banos is famous for its thermal hot springs, or baths, hence the name. It also has a vibrant backpacker scene going for it, and some awesome places to eat.

Ecuador is going through a drought, and since the country gets most of its power from hydroelectrolic dams, there are power outages to be dealt with. One way they conserve power is to cut it off at designated times every day, for a period of around four hours. Aparently the locals know when this will happen and schedule accordingly, but no matter what we did, we couldn't figure out any rhyme or reason to predict when the power would be out. This made for a lot of hungry nights!

We got ourselves some candles and got on with it. We took in the crowded sulfurous baths, wandered up and down the long streets, climbed the hillside to take in the view, and spent 40 minutes feeding a giant spider in the canyon. Good times all around. We even got some famous taffy, and managed to keep from busting all our teeth out. Well done Banos, well done.

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Photos

Waterfalls
Creepy horses for kids to sit on