After what ended up being an on and off again 2 week stint based in Quito (a big shout out to the Travellers Inn by the way) we finally decided to take the Circo de le Jim y Suz on the road. Destination: Baños, which literally translates as "Baths" in Spanish.
Small History of Baños: The reason for this is because Baños lies in the shadow of Volcán (volcano) Tungurahua, which up until recently has been erupting fairly often.
Anyway, long story short, the volcano feeds the hot springs which in turn is used to supply the hot pools in the town.
This makes Baños quite a popular destination for international (and local) tourists.
We arrived to see amazing sunny weather, which got us excited about our potential outdoor activities over the next few days.
Our first afternoon was mainly spent strolling around this small town, soaking up the sunshine & the sights, and we had our first of many visits to a popular restaurant/cafe called Casa Hood (the mocha milkshakes were to die for!)
Our hostel happened to have cable tv, so we spent the evening watching cheesy American sitcoms and reality tv (what can I say, sometimes Latin American tv just doesn´t cut the mustard).
Day 2: Awake to find that the heavens have opened up, and my anticipated outdoor adventure extravaganza in Baños was washing away before my very eyes. D´oh!
After lunch it stopped raining long enough to squeeze in some hiking in the surrounding mountains, however even this was cut short by our trail turning into a small river a few kilometres in. Some good views were experienced nontheless.
Food supplied by Cafe Good this time (apparently they all had to rhyme... or something).
Day 3: While in Baños we were determined to hire mountain bikes and ride 60km through the valleys down to the township of Puyo (weather pending of course).
It was raining once again, but it didn´t look too bad, so we geared up and got ready to go.
The weather finally cleared up and we organised some bikes and took off.
Mother nature had other plans for us however, and we did´t get 500m down the road before we got caught up in a torrential downpour.
We thought better than to spend the next 5 hours in this weather, so we rode back to the outdoor shop & said thanks but no thanks. Bike riding trip over.
It did actually clear up later in the day so we opted for a visit to the famous hot baths and spent an hour or so mingling with the locals until the novelty wore off and we spent another evening watching old episodes of Friends.
The next morning we caught a bus and then spent the next 8 or so hours in buses making our way to our next destination: Cuenca
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