On first impressions…
Picturesque town in the mountains. Green rolling hills, waterfalls in the distance, corn crops perched high in the mountain tops.

On further examination…
Arriving late, we woke up on our wedding anniversary in a dump! Luckily, we had done some research and we soon escaped to accommodation by the picturesque river with an English style garden of hydrangea borders, scattered brightly coloured dahlias and lush trees decorated with blue finches and other tiny bird life.

The day ahead was unexpectedly lovely. Adam surprised me in the morning with a traditional two-year anniversary cotton gift, an American one-dollar bill with a hand drawn picture of a turtle and volcano, and ‘happy anniversary’!

We ventured up the hill to the Luna Runtun resort where we ate lunch looking over the panoramic view and decided to go to the hot baths, supposedly heated by the nearby volcano. Meeting us on arrival was a film crew who were desperately looking to recruit some talent for their Ecuador promotion video! Initially extremely reluctant, we eventually decided that it couldn’t hurt to have a professional pic on our anniversary, so we agreed! ‘Look natural’ was our only instruction as they positioned us on high cliff faces, legs dangling into thin air, meters of potential free fall below! A drone flying overhead and a photographer hiding in the background, they delivered the shots to us almost immediately and were very grateful for our help! The promo video arrived and we actually featured, so the 34yo talent mustn’t have been too bad after all!

We spent 4.5 hours in the delightful pools, chatting away, reminiscing about our wedding day and our Tassie honeymoon. With everything this trip has exposed us to so far, these memories were a timely reminder of just how lucky we have been in our 15 years together.

Given we were beginning to feel like we had pressure ulcers forming due to all the sitting we had done over the past few weeks, a walk was in order. Being in a mountain town sitting at 1800 mt above sea level, this might not have been the brightest decision. Beginning in town, we slowly started making our way up the hill on the path that was no wider than 30cm, covered in mud and painfully steep. About half way up, exhausted from the altitude and our absolute lack of fitness, we bumped into an older travelling couple trekking the opposite way, down the mountain. They showed us their trail map and insisted, ‘whatever you do, when you get to the intersection up ahead, turn RIGHT. The path definitely looks like it goes left, but that’s the wrong way’. So off we went, confident that the trail blazers before us had it sorted. At the intersection, the same path that we had been following for the past 1.5 hrs clearly went LEFT, however we decided to follow instruction and took the path right. Commenting to each other, we need a machete, the path was covered with wild flowers, corn crops, bean plantations and lush, greenery. Finally, we arrived at a local’s house, adorned with a horrifying (chained) dog with death in its eyes lurching towards us and… a DEAD END! Morale was low at this point and the walk back to where the initial path was deflating! The next 1.5 hours was spent arduously climbing the man mountain, stopping every 20 steps to catch our breath!

Arriving at the top we came across some farmers harvesting large crops of ‘babucha’ fruit from their green houses. We stopped to have a look and a lady kindly came over and offered us two of the fruits as a gift. This would usually have been a lovely gesture but given we had just depleted every ounce of energy we could muster, the thought of carrying the two, kilo heavy fruits was too much! We accepted one and I proceeded to carry it for hours afterwards! A lovely man at a cafe even offered to juice it for us!

The trip ended at a huge swing park, set on top of the mountain crest. The views are said to be fantastic, in fact it’s said to be the most instagrammed photo opportunity in Ecuador. However, our poor fortune continued, and our view was not of the city of Banos below, but a cloud forest. After climbing to 2700 mt we had hoped for a little more!

Adam got some bromance time the following day and headed white water rafting with Nicholas, Oliver and Marc, the Danish trio we had met on our Amazon tour. From all reports, there was much laughter, a few hairy moments and some questionable looking wet suits involved! The boys were celebrating their 1-month travel anniversary, so we joined them for some drinks that night! A 1am finish for these old ducks was quite the shock to the system given our usual bed time for the trip so far has been 9pm!

In the end…
We loved Banos and could have easily stayed in the city of bathrooms a lot longer!