We stopped in Banos for a week on the way to Cuenca. Banos should have a tilda over the “n” but I haven’t downloaded a Spanish keyboard. It’s basically a tourist town in a wide gorge. The surrounding mountains and countryside are suitable for an array of outdoors activities and there are hot baths around. We don’t do much in the way of extreme outdoors activities anymore, though we did go for some walks and visited one of the baths. Sometimes the local volcano glows (It last erupted, forcing evacuation, in 2011). That’s a popular trek. Bicycling 60 km down the gorge a thousand meters to the lowland tropical city of Puyo would be nice, and doable, but we passed on it. I thought about rafting, but passed n that, too. Fact is, our minds are focused on plunking down.
All we did in and around Banos was go the the less than impressive cement hot pools once, walk around the friendly confines of the town which has most of the comforting old favorite tourist stuff, mosey around the river and up to a popular lookout, go to a neatly trimmed park, and to a waterfall.
This is one of my shorter posts. Her come the pics, which are nothing spectacular.
The town itself is not worth immortalizing in this blog. The church is pretty nice for a town this size.
The lookout looks out onto less spectacular views than the bus ride into town, but since it’s one of the few things to go do that’s not adventurous it passes an an activity. The draw is a couple of swings and a tree house. You can get a micro-thrill swinging out over the edge and looking out.
There are a couple of pedestrian bridges in town you can use to cross over the river.
It was a little windy. Hold onto your hat.
Actually, there are dozens of these bridges up and down the gorge. You’ve seen many like this around the world if you’ve followed my blog. Here’s another, down by the most majestic waterfall in the area, Pailon del Diablo.
Here’s the waterfall itself. It looks a lot better in person, as they usually do. The approach is on the right. We have pictures, but they don’t do it justice. Below is the best of a bad lot. you can see one of the, like, balconies you can view it from.
If you’re into borderline spelunking, you can crouch low or crawl through the rocks to the top. Myung did it. She slipped and hurt her tailbone, which is still bothering her.
That’s going to do it for Banos. You say, what did you do for a week? We did the other stuff I mentioned, but the pictures aren’t worth posting. And we chilled.
We are in Cuenca now. We rented a room in a huge house for a month. It should be fine. there’s a couple and their twin two year-olds living here. They aren’t even around much, so it’s almost like having this eight bedroom place to ourselves. There will be a complete report on everything pretty soon.
Until then, be well all of you.
