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After leaving the animal rescue centre with 3 other volunteers, we headed to the spa town of Banos which has a number of hot springs due the the huge amount of active volcanoes in the region. We chilled out for a day & relished the fact that we didn´t have to scrub anything & then booked a couple of days in the Amazon jungle near Puyo.
We visited an animal sanctuary with a bunch of very cheeky monkeys who have a bad habit of going through your pockets and running off with anything they find (we were forewarned so it wasn´t a problem). Then we visited an indigenous Qichua community and had our souls cleansed by a Shaman which was handy as it needed doing anyway. I wasn´t expecting a Shaman to wear a football shirt (along with a hat made out of most of a parrot & lots of beads, etc) but I guess that´s another form of religion too. There was a lot of rattling of branches & blowing of smoke and then it was all over. We visited a number of waterfalls and then went on to a jungle lodge for the night which isn´t anywhere near as grand as it sounds. No electric, enormous spiders and pretty cold as we had to climb what seemed like an enormous mountain to get to it. There was a fantastic view though and fireflies flitting about so that went some way to make up for my aching legs.
Next day we went on a canoe trip down the river and then did some more hiking to some great viewpoints and visited another indigenous community. We bought some yucca from them for dinner in the evening at another jungle lodge next to a river. By this point however it had been raining for about 36 hours so we were pretty muddy & wet & it was good to get back to Banos where I am again now. I´m staying here for a couple of days now & then heading back to the capital, Quito on Saturday (bus ticket $3.50 - about 1 pound 75 for approx 3 hrs 30 mins but I don´t believe it´ll be that quick).
On Monday I´m off to the Amazon animal rescue centre.
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