Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
From Montinita we travelled a 8 hours or so inland to a small town called Banos, which is Spanish for baths, famed for its hot springs and a volcano that has only just been declared dormant again (apparently, just three months ago you could see the crater glowing at night and smoke pouring out)
We stayed here for Christmas, meeting up with two friends of mine, Drew & Jill who are also travelling around South America. We stayed in a beautiful eco hostel run by a Kiwi and Australian. The bed was amazing, pillows that weren't hard as breeze blocks and set down by a river with views of the volcano's around it. At night you could see firefly's buzzing around the fruit trees. All very different from another cold dreary Christmas in England!
Some of the things we all got up to in Banos...
Driving a Jeep up to see the Volcano.
Taking a hot bath with hundreds of Ecuadorian men, women and children. Apparently the temperature of the baths gets up to about 42oC. You can't stay in for too long, so you jump out and then in to the smaller icy bath. Supposed to be good for you!
Driving a go kart type thing to see some waterfalls. (We nearly got arrested doing this as Mel and I weren't wearing our helmets.. oops)
After Banos Mel and I decided to go do a part of the Quilotoa Loop. This is a chance to see remote Andean villages and to do some walking in some amazing places.
Little did we know how hard the walking would be!
We arrived at 2pm after travelling from about 1800m above sea level to 3900 metres above sea level. We literally couldn't breath! We decided to stay in the first place we saw which were some rooms owned by a local family. Most of the rooms had a wood burning stove in them, except for ours! After nearly 2 months of 25oC temperatures, the 6oC or so that it went down to was very unwelcome! Sleeping with 5 blankets on the bed felt odd.
The day after we arrived we took a walk around the edge of the crater. This starts off easy enough. It goes up and down and I read some where it should take about 5 hours.
Every thing started OK, a few hours in there wasn't too many drama's. I had a pounding headache and every time we had to climb a path Mel thought she was going to be sick! But all down to altitude sickness! So 4 hours in and we come across what is probably the hardest part of the walk. The lip of the crater climbs to probably over 4000 metres above sea level and it looks like it should be attempted with ropes! So we both made a tactical decision to go to a path that looked like it went around peak and meet up with last path back to the village. How wrong we were!
We kept walking for what felt like hours and hours! The path, which was well trodden at the beginning, was now becoming little more than a few foot prints here and there. The afternoon bad weather, cloud, fog and probably rain, was starting to close in and tiredness and a little more than mild irritation was also more than on it's way. So after back tracking for 10 minutes or so, we decided to go down a valley in to what looked like some ones farm land.
This valley was made up of large boulders, small rocks, and lots and lots of loose sand. I feel on my arse more than once, and Mel feel and hurt her wrist. We finally managed to get to the bottom, in to the guys farm and started to walk along a track. Thankfully after only 10 minutes or so, a truck, the local taxi's, come from around a corner. In my pigeon Spanish I told the driver, a boy of about 13, where we were staying. And then come the 20 minute drive back! The track we had come across, had we had to walk all the way would have probably taken us 5 hours to walk, and that's if we managed to find the right way!
Things learnt? Always take a map, always check the route (had we done the hard bit first, we would have probably been OK) and maybe don't attempt this kinda thing with out getting used to the altitude
After this we moved on to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We were only supposed to be here for a few days, however, we have stayed here for 4 nights now as the place where I had some post sent to has shut down for New Years and isn't open till Monday.
Anyway, we spent New years eve in Quito. All across Ecuador people make papier mache effigies and then burn them in the street on new years eve. Our plan was to find a decent restaurant, have some good food, a bottle of wine and watch the fireworks. We come across a place that did tapas and wine, and then they said the magic words "unlimited food and wine"!. How could we refuse and offer like that!
The restaurant overlooked a square with quite a few bars, so on the midnight countdown we all went out and counted in Spanish backwards, hard to do after all that all you can drink vino! And then joined the locals in jumping over their burning dummies
The hangover next day wasn't pleasant
- comments
Ma & Pa Jones Wouldnt you have been better off getting a guide or a Sherpa when going up mountains where you don't know where you are going? If thats how cheap vino affects you don't drink it - Dad says stick to beer!