Banos - Cycling along the avenue of waterfalls

After the Quilotoa Loop, Wei and I arrived Banos on last Sat. Banos is a little town situated at the bottom of the active volcano, Tungurahua(5016m). So one of the attractions here is volcano watching. If you are 'lucky' enough, you can watch the 'eruption' of the volcano.

Once we arrived here, after settling down in a hostel, we started our first activities here. That was cycling along the avenue of waterfalls($5 for around 6 to 7 hours).

Though it was raining, we still started our cycling. It was an easy route at first, because it was just going downhill and I didn't need to put into much effort. But when it went uphill, it was really a tough job, I would rather I sit on the bus instead of cycling.

However, cycling also had its advantage because we could stop by every waterfall, took our own pace, and didn't need to hurry back to the bus. We even met local people and chatted with them happily during our cycling. Besides that, we even became one of the attractions for the tourists on the Chivas(an open bus for the sight-seeing of tourists). Maybe because we looked a little bit funny with our helmets and bikes, so the tourists(local tourists from other parts of Ecuador) even took picutres of us.

The first waterfall we encountered, Chamana.

Besides, waterfalls, we also saw other activities going on along the road, like cable cart swinging between two mountains(Canopying), so the people can have a clear look of the waterfall.

Canopying, it costs only $1 for swinging across the river.

Another spectular waterfall, Salto de Agoyan.

Puenting, or bridge jump. Originally, I think this was scary enough, but when the next day my friend did the real bungee jump on a much higher bridge, this became not scary at all.

Another small waterfall along the road.

As we took too long time to stay beside the waterfall and chatting a lot, so when we finally arrived the last waterfall, Pailon del Diablo, it was already getting dark.

Orginally this route can go to Puyo, another city in the east of Banos, as it was too late and there was still 48km to go, so we started to hitch back to Banos. For the first 30mins, we couldn't find a pick up, so we just cycled along the dark road and I thought maybe we needed to cycled the 20km again until we get back to Banos!

Luckily, at last we were able to hitch a truck and stayed at the back. Though there was no cover at the back of the truck and it was so windy, we stayed with the local people and chated for a while. The feeling was much better than joining a local tour and stayed comfortably in the big tourist bus. It seems I like 'torture' myself, but by this way, I can also feel what the locals feel, but not just bypassing the country like the other tourists do.