Hotel Banos

... rambled something in Spanish at made a gesture to me to pull the reigns to the left. I soon realised this was to avoid being wiped out by the tree branch that was overhanging the edge of the road we were on , and narrowly missed it. <br><br>My ass was beginning to get numb when the lady behind whistled at the horses and they took off into a canter, Whoah there! what the freak? Ride ém cowboy! loving it now, as I bounced up and down, one hand on the reigns and the ...

... to have a massage from a sort of natural jacuzzi, a real strong jacuzzi. :-)<br>Tonight we're going to have a few drinks, celebration of the happy hour for 3 dollars we get 2 caïperinha's. They are really good and Belga Queen (Gent) can learn something from them :-p. Just kidding!<br><br>Thursday, we're going for a walk, to return to the Cozy Hostal in Riobamba in the afternoon.<br><br>Hasta la proxima<br><br>PS. Photographes will follow

... Ecuador with a visit to Ecuadors renowned spa town. Two buses and a few hundred kilometers later we had made it to Banos, located on the northern foothills of the Tungurahua volcano. Nervous that the town would inundated with rotund Germans (who are famous for their love of spa towns) talking loudly and imposing themselves and their tiny swimwear on the hot pools Renee and I arrived under the cover of darkness.<br><br>Being nestled in a rather stunning location ...

... made the falls a little too strong for the beginner. It was a great morning with no clouds, warmer water and just the two of us and our guide. This meant that we got to do the 45m waterfall twice, which made for some really great photos, I will upload them soon. Our guid went down head first for the last drop of the day, he was an awesome guy.<br><br>Spent the night in the hot baths, which are heated by the local ...

... of the waterfalls, which is a 60km ride through the valley until you hit the amazon). Anyway, a rafting trip was leaving and they needed an extra person so I signed up, and also signed up to abseil down some waterfalls in the afternoon!<br>We drove abit out of town, got the typical ********** latin america safety briefing and were in the water within about 10 minutes.<br>The water was bloody freezing, even with a wetsuit, and our guide deliberately flipped the raft at ...

... the ecalyptus flavoured furnise. Just before passing out we were pulled out and wiped with cold damp towels. This carry-on continues a couple of times before Alex was told to sit in a cold bath whilst I got taken to another room with my own bath. You can imagine my fears when I heard screams from the original torture chamber that Alex was still in (obviously concerned for my girlfriend (but also, what the hell was coming my way)). As it turned out the torture ...

... painted him with some camouflage stripes. Perhaps I´ll stick to blowguns in the future anyway.<br> After lunch, we all sat down with the family to talk about things; because my Spanish is still pretty rough, I´m not quite sure what we talked about. After our ambiguous discussion, the four of us gave the shaman some money for the family, and soon afterward, we caught the bus back to Puyo and began the trek back to Baños.<br> On Monday, I decided to take it easy on my ...

... in the rock. It ranged in colour from light gold<br>through to a deep greeny yellow, it was beautiful.<br><br>All the way up we kept passing gringos<br>on bikes going down. Clearly the thing to do in Banos is to hire a<br>bike, ride down the mountain and get a lift back up, cheats! We<br>passed people canyoning, bungee jumping, messing about on quads and<br>horse riding. There's an awful lot of outdoorsy stuff to do here,<br>oh, and the hot spas, which we'll be trying ...

... dark it was incredibly scary. We worried that we&#8217;d hit a pot hole and wipe out, or that a car would come up behind us and run us over. I swear I&#8217;ve never pedaled faster! At the end of the ride was a gorgeous waterfall that took about half an hour to hike down to. When we got back up we were able to pair up with some Belgian girls and share a truck back to town. We sat in the back ...

... city and the surrounding mountains. It was really really steep, which is why we didn´t make it to the top, but really we had better things to do than see a giant cross up close. Namely, canyoning! In the afternoon we got to rappel down 4 different waterfalls, which was super-fun. The first was sort of a baby version, where you learned the ropes (literally) and figured out how to rappel. The second was a ...