Sunday 18th January: A hairy ride.....and we're not talking about the zip wires
As we've been sat out on the roof at night, we've seen lots of land trains go by, hurtling around the streets. However, we have also seen Chivas - an open sided bus with benches on it, lit in luminous colours and Latin-American dance music blaring out.
One of the most popular things to do here is the Ruta de las cascadas, which follows the Rio Pastaza down a gorge with steep sides. There are many beautiful waterfalls along the way and the route eventually leads down to the Amazon.
If you look on Viator or TripAdvisor, a 4 hour tour costs about $60 per person.
Instead Kevin and I went to the Terminal Turistica and found a parked chiva. We asked the driver if he was doing the cascades route and he hailed over a young women. She sold us two tickets for $3 dollars each and, mysteriously, a car came to pick us up and took us to an office near the Terminal Terrestre or bus station.
A couple of minutes later a chiva arrived and we and about 8 other people boarded. It has doors which open up automatically and you have to climb on board where there are banquettes to sit on. Music was playing loudly and neon lights were flashing, despite it being daylight.
Our driver headed off at quite a pace, taking the bumps at speed and using his horn. Our route followed the river and we could see the canyon, uncomfortably deep, below. There were lots of water falls but we only paused at the major ones.
We passed a hydro electric energy plant on the way. The road also passed through many tunnels which were so narrow you could almost touch the traffic coming in the opposite direction.
Suddenly we were on a single track road which was no wider than our chiva. It was almost carved into the rock and parts of the road had subsided into the canyon. Looking over there was a very low wall, broken in places. separating us from the abyss. We both felt a bit queasy.
At parts, waterfalls ran over over chiva, splashing us with water.
N.B. Photos are out of sequence.
First stop was an adventure place called Mono Loco.
We were told to disembark and were given a video presentation of all the exciting things we could do there - zip wiring across the canyon, a glass bridge, a Tibetan bridge, bungee-jumping. The possibilities of death were endless - and, for Ecuador, quite expensive. Some of the experiences were $25. Here's a link to a video to show you what goes on there.
One of the employees asked us whether we wanted to have a go across the suspended bridge, and Joan explained that she was 62 years old and wanted to live a bit longer. We watched whilst our much younger companions ziplined or walked across bridges.
The Chiva took us over a rather dodgy looking road bridge to collect our companions from the other side of the canyon and we continued our journey to the next attraction. This was at a waterfall called The Veil of the Bride - a common name for waterfalls in South America.
Here, for $2, you could get in a metal cage on a wire over the canyon and drop closer to the waterfall. Common sense had clearly deserted us, probably because our brains had been scrambled by the bumpy roads, and we took the ride. It was quite a fast descent but fun.
Finally we arrived at the final and biggest waterfall - el pailon del Diablo or the devil's cauldron, which is 80 meters high.
We had very limited time here. We noticed that there were reduced entrance fees for people of "la tercera edad" i.e. oldies, so we blagged two tickets. Here the roaring Rio Verde merges with the Rio Pastaza. The walk down was steep and then when we got to the bottom, the best view of the waterfall was access by crossing a wooden suspended bridge (puente colgante). We both chickened out and walked back uphill and bought a frozen banana. Much safer!
We made our return to Banos at a breakneck speed and were dropped off near the Terminal Bus station. Here we decided to buy tickets for our longer distance journey (167 km) to Alausi on Tuesday. It was a bit like Race across the World. The bus stations are manic but the first bus company directed us to another bus company where there is a direct bus. It cost $10 for us both. Here's some photos with more blogging later.
Rio Pastaza
Frozen bananas - $1
Buying snacks.
Rio Pastaza
Our best view of el pailon del Diablo
Pailon del Diablo
Hanging bridge
Rio Verde at the top of Pailon del Diablo
Rio Verde
People bathing at Rio Verde
Going through tunnels
The cage we went in
The veil of the bride waterfall
The narrow road we drove along
Bridges at Mono Loco
People ziplining
The narrow road
Waterfall running over the chiva
Waterfall was touchable from the Chiva
Tunnels
Hydroelectric plant
The Bus station
On our way home we dropped into Escobar, a real ale pub, overlooking central park for beer and snacks to steady our frayed nerves. Purely medicinal.
We collected our laundry from a shop. After 10 days Joan was running out of clothes and there are small laundries all around town which can turn your washing round in 3-4 hours.
We were both pretty exhausted by the chiva ride. After a rest, we headed out to the supermarket to get some supplies.
It was a Sunday night and the plaza in front of the Basilica de Nuestra Sra de Aguas Santos was lit up.
A street seller offered Joan and candle to light in the cathedral Joan always does this in memory of her mother. Whenever her mother went in a church on her travels, she would light a candle for her children and grandchildren. It's a tradition Joan likes to keep up for family, friends, neighbours and colleagues.
There were literally hundreds of candles lit and the heat was immense with huge pools of wax.
The church is dedicated to Our Lady of the Holy Water and there is a big festival to celebrate her in February/March.
In the basilica there are lots lurid of paintings by Fr Enrique Mideros, depicting miracles accredited to our Lady. Quite a lot of them seemed to involve collapsing bridges or travellers falling off the road into the canyon, which put today's adventure into perspective.
More seriously, Banos is very close to one of Ecuador's most active volcanoes, Tungurahua. The own has been flattened by earthquakes on many occasions and been covered in ash and pumice from the eruptions. Locals believe that Our Lady has saved them many times from the worst of the volcano.
Still exhausted from the day's adventures, we retired to the balcony. The climate is so lovely here, we browsed a few real estate pages and found that $400,000 would by us a medium sized hotel overlooking the volcano. With the world going mad at the moment, staying on feels very, very tempting.
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