Trip to the Banos

Hi all!! Well, we had our first weekend journey to a place in the central highlands called the Banos. For those who know some basic spanish, let me first clarify, this was NOT an extended trip to the bathroom. Anyway, it was a gorgeous scene-the small town of Banos is in between the mountains and this lush greenery. There are also natural hot springs that we visited. The hot springs were nice, but I think we went at the wrong time because they were not hot enough for me at all. We also went when all of the Ecuadorians go with all of their gazillion small kids. So, between all of the kids attempting the breaststroke (as we got drenched) and I couldn't stop imagining how many of them probably were peeing or already peed in the spring-needless to say, I didn't stay in there long.
But the next day, we rented bicycles and rode the path from Banos to Puya. It was absolutely amazing-mostly downhill (thank God). We would park our bikes along the way, and hike up (always painfully uphill) to see these amazing waterfalls. And of course, there has to always be some mild drama-well, in order to get to one of the waterfalls, we had to cross this suspension bridge (you know like the ones in the movies-where the damsel has one of her legs that slip through and the hero has to bust in and save her-very frequent in Bollywood). Anyway, I was too cool to fasten my chin strap to my hat, so of course, with the first gust of wind, it blew off down way below. So, poor Tarak, flung himself down this muddy passage to rescue my hat and then had to use the branches to pull himself up. Of course, the people who passed us on the bridge thought we were nuts, because I was screaming at him in Gujrati to be careful and the hat was only $12.
Anway, the last stop was this waterfall called the Rio Verde, which was really beautiful. Of course, our legs were noodles by that time, not to mention my butt was extremely sore from the damn bike all day, and the ride back was ALL uphill..(Tarak was all, oh yeah, I mountain bike all the time...I could do it...whatever)...but we threw our bikes on the back of this pick up truck, sat in the back and rode along the sunset and watched the scenary as we drove back into the mountains of Bano. :)