Banos

We left our hotel in Latacunga on Monday morning with the intention to pay one last visit to the welder that saved the day.

Unfortunately when we turned up nobody was at home, and we were only able to take a picture of the yard where the works had been carried out.

With the bike perfectly functioning, getting to Banos is a piece of cake.
These are 2 pictures of the central stand perfectly welded and lateral stand straight again

The road is fast and pleasant. When we turn left from Ambato on the A30 we begin our descent from 2800 down to 1800. The temperature begins to rise (finally) and the nature around changes rapidly, with green forests and waterfalls appearing in the valley formed by the river Pastaza.
Yes, we left a volcano (The Cotopaxi) with a white top behind us, but a new one is also welcoming us (Tungurahua), and this one, not only is very close to town but has only stopped being active 3 years ago.

We base ourselves just 2 kms outside town at the “casa verde”, the most eco friendly hotel in the area. Our room not only offers spectacular views of the valley and the river but it also has a hammock on the balcony....it just doesn’t get any better than this.

Elena checking mails on the Hammock

Views from our balcony

We really enjoyed our conversations with Douglas, the Aussie owner of Casa Verde.

Only 5 years ago Douglas and his wife bought this piece of land for 30K. According to the law in Ecuador all you need is to invest $30,000 in the country and you automatically acquire permanent residency, and that really simplifies things when it comes to investing/moving abroad.

The other appealing factor for Douglas was the currency. He reckons that investing in South America can be fairly dangerous since currencies over here tend to have a fairly consistent history of devaluation. In Ecuador, since the currency is the US dollar, this risk is partially reduced.

Casa Verde has been functioning and accepting guests for over 3 years, and yet it is not completely finished (in particular the outside looks very bare)

The interiors however are very stylish and I have to admit that our jaws dropped when we discovered that Douglas built the whole place pretty much by himself.

We are told that this is what you learn in Australian schools. I would gladly swap my 5 years of Latin studies for this!

Banos essentially offers 3 things: good food, relaxation (with its numerous SPAs) and adventure (with agencies offering all sort of activities from climbing, canopying, rafting etc).

In 5 days we obviously tried them all. In our opinion the highlights were the meals at the Cafe Marianne for exquisite French cuisine with a fireplace and great music, and rafting on the Pastaza river.

Thanks to the German twins this time we managed to paddle with perfect synchronisation.



Sadly we were not too impressed with the SPAs we tried. Their enthusiasm was not enough to compensate the lack of skills. Shame because we were really hoping to get a bit of a treat after our tough days in the Cotopaxi region.

On a positive note we really enjoyed our day trip to Pelileo, a small village 30 km north of Banos. 60% of the population here is dedicated to the production and sale of jeans. The whole town is filled with shops selling jeans of all brands or no brands at all. Prices vary from £3 for a cheap pair to £8 for the expensive ones........yes, of course we did pile up and now the bike is few Kgs heavier!

In the picture a pile of jeans in the streets of Pelileo