We arrived in Baños following spending a night in nearby Ambato to break up our journey through the mountains. Our need for Spanish lessons at this point was once again made clear after the taxi driver tried to take us all the way form Ambato to Baños despite our insistence that we actually only wanted to get to the bus station in order to catch a bus there! We did convey this to him eventually and he then proceeded to chase down a bus for us and we have to try to load our bags and run alongside the bus and jump on, as the 10 second wait for us was clearly too much for the driver!

Our initial view of Baños was not as positive as expected! It rained for the first 4 or 5 days constantly, with clouds covering any views of the surrounding mountains; and the hostel, although really nice, was really expensive due to it being a public holiday! At this point we did start to question the idea of staying for the next month to study- especially when people kept mentioning the rainy season and questioning whether this was the start of it or not! The weather in Baños is really strange because it is so close to the jungle, this makes it different from other highland towns and more affected by rain!

After the weekend we went in search of a Spanish school. Having looked online previously we knew there were a few and thought we´d check them all out! Until we went to the first one and decided that we really liked the people and they were able to start immediately! And so, the next day we went back to school! For the first couple of weeks we had decided to have three hour lessons each day and then increased this to four in the last two weeks. i think the first lesson was worse for me than Will! Having studied Spanish before I thought that I had completely forgot everything and was really put on the spot in the first lesson when Mayra (my teacher) asked me loads of questions, only spoke Spanish and asked me to describe the plot of the first Harry Potter book! I could hardly remember this in English let alone Spanish! The lessons were really intensive with half each day in a class followed by hours and hours of homework each night. But they definitely seem to have helped and I´m amazed by how much I actually knew but had forgotten and how much more confident we both are now talking to people!

Baños is one of the best places in Ecuador to do lots of outdoor activities so we were busy at the weekends as well! A lot of our spare time was taken up with attempted volcano spotting. Tungurahua is an active volcano 8km from Baños, and you´d think that a volcano couldn't be that hard to spot! We managed to see most of the volcano on one of our first days after a very steep uphill climb- although it was only visible for a few minutes before hiding behind the clouds! According to Marco (Will's teacher) Tungurahua is a very shy volcano! Throughout the time in Baños we regularly walked to viewpoints every time the clouds seemed to clear- the volcano was just behind another peak and so not visible from in town. But, it was only on our last week when we rented a quad bike and went up to the Casa del Arbol (tree house) that we finally saw the peak of the volcano through the fast moving clouds! And had a really interesting chat with the man that lives there and monitors the volcano- all in Spanish too which we were pleased about!! Slightly annoying after all this effort to see the volcano was that on the day we left it was visible from the bus all the way past Ambato and nearly to Quito (about 2 hours north!) Sadly we didn't get so lucky to see Cotapaxi on the journey as well- Cotapaxi I think is the world´s highest and active volcano!

Other activities we did included Canyonning (abseiling down waterfalls through a narrow canyon), white water rafting, horse riding on the volcano and we visited the natural thermal baths! Rafting was amazing, so much fun, got absolutely soaked but managed (just about) to stay inside the raft. This is definitely something we plan to do again on the trip! Canyonning was initailly pretty scary, but I found the test abseil worse than the real things. Our crazy guides ran down vertical drops face first in a few seconds while it took us a bit longer! Horse riding took a couple of days to come about after having to be cancelled because of the rain. This was something I really wanted to do but was also really scared about! I had the laziest horse ever, called Pinta, and generally he needed the guide to be right next to him to make him bother moving at all! And Will´s horse was a bit jumpy and kept deciding that the rocks in front were a bit scary! We went up the base of the volcano, through lots of rain and clouds, but the scenery was beautiful anyway- quite spooky! It was very strange that you couldn't see the volcano even though we were riding on it!

One final thing that has to be mentioned! Quilombo was an Argentinian Grill Restaurant. We had been recommended by just about everyone that we needed to go to this restaurant and share one of the big grills! This consisted of a plate of different sausages (including blood sausage- yuk!) followed by salad, potatoes and a plate of meat- ribs and steak. At this point Will was a little unsure about the reports of ridiculous amounts of meat and frankly looked disappointed! Until another plate came out, this time with about half a chicken on it! After this we both felt pretty satisfied maybe even venturing on a bit stuffed, when another plate of meat appeared. This time with the most amazingly cooked tender loin steaks. Following this we were definitely completely stuffed! Sadly we didn't get to return to Quilombo as planned, we had planned to take Mayra and Marco out after the end of the lessons, but I spent the last week in Baños ill in bed! After two visits to the doctor- one completely in Spanish! It appears I must have eaten something dodgy and had a bacterial infection in my tummy! Luckily this has finally gone now after days of being stuck inside!!

We were really sad to leave Baños and to say goodbye to Mayra and Marco but it was time to move on and now we just have to keep practising all the Spanish we learnt!!