Banos, Ecuador

We awoke to a cold mist and drizzle, but were glad to be in cold weather again. It was nice to fire up the stove in the van and make some hot chai, and lounge around for a bit, studying the maps and reading about fishing in Argentina. After an hour or so we packed up the van and headed back towards the mountain, to see if maybe it was visible. To our surprise, the weather was a bit different once we came out of the valley that the campground was in, and sure enough, we could see the summit of the volcano. At first I didn’t believe Noah when he said he could see people on the summit through his binoculars, but when I took a look, there they were, with other groups on the ridge below, about to summit. From the fresh snow that could be seen on the peak, it looked like Dave had a cold and wet night climbing, but it looked like this morning his view would be pretty good, although clouds kept enveloping the summit. We took a bunch of pictures and video and then headed down out of the park back to the highway, where we headed towards Baños, a city with hot springs that Christian had told us was very pretty, and something we definitely had to see on our way south.

We took the first turn that had a sign for Banos and we thought we were on one road on the map, but it turned out to be another, so what should have taken maybe an hour, took three, as we had to climb up and down gigantic river valleys with little villages around every corner. The scenery was pretty, but by the time we made it there, we were tired, and ready to find a hostel. The town sits at the bottom of a big volcanic valley, with lush peaks all around, and waterfalls cascade down towards the city. As we came into town we could see the result of the last volcanic eruption in 2006, where lava had come down and taken out the old bridge and road. Now just a temporary steel bridge spanned the gap. After a great dinner we headed to bed for some rest for a big day of driving to try to make it close to the Peruvian border.