A few last activities

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Banos is a nice town famous for being a tourist centre for doing lots of activities, so we thought we´d have a few days to try some out. The town sits under an active volcano which last erupted properly in 1999, evacuating the town for about a year. The volcano still has mini eruptions regularly which make for spectacular, but safe viewing if you are lucky enough.

On the first day we hired some quad bikes for 3 hours to ride about 20km out of town to a series of waterfalls. It was quite surprising, but inkeeping with South American health & safety that we were able to take the quads without supervision (and lightweight crash-helmets) out onto the main road and wherever we wanted. Obviously we got off the main road at every opportunity and took to the rougher stuff (the speed bumps on the main road were also fun).

On the second day we did a white water rafting trip with a group of Americans, in an extremely cold but fun river with loads of rapids. The backdrop was amazing as the river wound its way around mountains with cloud forest and the volcano above.

We did an evening trip to a viewing point to try and see the volcano erupt which was a complete rip-off with fog providing about 5 metres visibility, and a feeling that the volcano is not seen particularly often from that particular point (even in daylight !!)

We moved on the following day after a night of torrential rain (and i mean torrential and all night) following a delay to a bus ride due to the road out of town being closed due to the road being flooded and covered in mud and rocks washed down from the mountain. Heading towards the high Andes again to a very remote village called Chugchilan on the Quilatoa Loop, a famous route across some interesting roads.

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