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Second day in Banos. We decided to do a hike up in the mountains above the city. We climbed up to La Cruz first for an overlook of the city. About 1 hour straight up the hill. Then we continued up the mountain with the intent of getting to Casa de Arbol (Tree House). We were trying to reach a view point of the volcano Tunguruhua which has been incredibly active recently. The whole climb up we were hearing booms and seeing smoke in the sky but the clouds kept hiding the actual volcano from us. We got pretty high up the mountain but when we saw a sign that said it was still 2 km (uphill) to the Tree House, we decided to pack it in at a beautiful little restaurant on the side of the road where we had an amazing lunch of trout. The house had a beautiful garden with llamas grazing around. We ate lunch to the non-stop noise from the volcano above us but still couldn't see it behind the clouds.
We climbed back down the mountain through a little village and had coffee in a beautiful spot called Casa Cielo, looking way down over the valley and Banos. Then we headed across the ridge to the statue of the Virgin. She looks over the city from the top of the ridge of the mountain that actually protects Banos from Tunguruhua's eruptions. I guess that's why they put the Virgin there. After that it was down many, many stairs to the town. A great and challenging 6 hour hike.
In the evening when we got back to the hostel Itai told us there was a lot of volcano activity going on and we should go up to the mountain to view. We organized a van for 10 of us (mostly Israelis) and off we went up to the viewpoint at The Antennas which is on the opposite side of the valley from Tunguruhua. The viewpoint was high enough up so that we were above the clouds and could easily see the volcano (finally!) We stopped at a little house with a porch overlooking the valley and sat for 2 hours just watching the most amazing sound and light show that Mother Nature could ever put out. The volcano was spitting out lava and sparks like a fireworks show. It was kind of freaking some of us out but the locals assured us that it happens every 6 months or so like this so in the end we just considered ourselves the luckiest people ever to have been able to see this amazing sight. The hot chocolate was excellent too!
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