Baños

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Enduring this 7 hour journey was a true test of courage!

We´d read many a story about nightmare journeys but assumed that these were all slightly exaggerated, until we encountered the bus ride to Baños.

A hair-raising journey over the mountains, where the bus drivers raced each other along the mountain roads, overtaking each other round corners with sheer drops of hundreds of feet below. The conductors hanging out of the side doors egging each other on as they overtake! Absolutely insane!

To top this we were thrown off our bus at our "scheduled" stop at the entrance to a roundabout for a quick change of bus any Formula One team would be proud of!

A short, less stressful bus ride later we arrived in Baños, relieved and glad to have survived. We checked in to our third choice hostel and went for a walk around town and some lunch.

Baños is a small town in the shadow of the active Tungurahua Volcano, which is currently on Orange Alert and can erupt at any time. We were therefore quite surprised to see the local tour operators offering tours and recommending hikes up the volcano.

Having climbed Volcan Villarrica in Chile we weren´t interested in the hike up Tungurahua, mostly due to the fact that you hit heights of +3,800m, so instead we decided to do a 3 hour trek around part of the base the following morning then relax at one of the hot springs.

Back at the hostel, I don´t know whether it was the stress of the journey to Baños or not but we decided to have an early night....8.30pm early night, the earliest Av´s been to bed since he was 8! Some 12 hours later Av awoke refreshed, however, Suzz hadn´t slept a wink and with the weather taking a turn for the worse, with pouring rain and low cloud, we decided to skip the days planned activities and head straight to Quito.

So after a nice breakfast we left for the bus station and bought our tickets to Quito. With 30 minutes remaining before our departure Suzz realised that we had forgotten our moneybelts, containing our passports and credit cards, back in the hostel safe so Av made a quick dash for it, returning with minutes to spare - disaster avoided!

As we only ended up staying overnight in Baños we didn't even manage to take any photos - SORRY!

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