Banos
Christian May 3rd, 2008
We wanted to get to Banos early enough to find a place to stay and get to walk the city a bit, so we woke up at 6am to catch the 5 hour bus ride to Banos from Tena. We were excited for Banos, since we had heard nothing but nice things about the town. We were not disappointed. We arrived around noon. You could tell it was a town based in tourism right from the start. As soon as we were off the bus we were offered tours. We bypassed the touts and checked in at our hostel which was very nice. At $13 a night, we felt like we struck a deal. It had free internet and a great rooftop terrace. The weather was sunny and we promptly headed out to explore the city and the local market. The supermarket was a nice surprise for it was quite large and had lots of choices, unlike Tena. We decided on ham and cheese sandwiches and enjoyed them from our hostel’s terrace which has a beautiful view of the city and surrounding hillside (including a waterfall). We explored some more of the city and found out there was lots to do including rafting, canyoning, horseback riding, paragliding, hiking, bungie jumping, kayaking, bike riding, & you could rent quads to explore the hillside. We could quickly see why so many people enjoy their time in Banos and end up staying an extra day. We checked out rafting and found out we could go rafting the next day but we decided we were still too sore and beat up from Tena and would think about it another day, especially since it was class 4-5. After much thought and debate, we decided to do horseback riding (Casey’s first choice). I figured that she had done many things that I have wanted to do, so it was her turn. We asked our hostel for recommendations and they gave us a flyer for this guy named “Antonio Banderas”. The front desk called him and he came to give us the low down on his tour. He was a very friendly person, and a bit special. We decided to go with him and gave him a deposit for a tour the next day.
Around 10 am “Antonio” picked us up for our ride and we walked a few blocks to meet the horses and our guide. The owner has a funny habit of naming the horses after famous people, so Casey was shown to a brown horse named “John Travolta” and I was shown to a gray named “George Bush” ha ha! Antonio had a stray dog named “Blackie” who followed him everywhere. He explained that Blackie was a bit mental. We quickly noticed this as Blackie would chase after moving cars trying to bite their tires. The stray followed us the whole way, every once in a while barking at the horses. We were to walk up 2 mountain paths and enjoy a view of an active volcano and another lookout over the city. Unfortuntately, for us the day was very rainy and cloudy. Casey’s horse had some wicked gas. It would fart loudly every 10 seconds or so. Whenever it had to go up a steep incline it would really let loose the gas almost as if it’s farts were a turbo booster. The walk up to the volcano lookout was uneventful and we dismounted and walked along a bed of lavaflow next to a small stream. The volcano had erupted about 2 years ago and there were volcanic rocks everywhere, our guide encouraged us to take a small rock as a souvenir. We did so but only because we couldn’t see the actual volcano or anything else because of the clouds so we started the journey back down. Our guide only spoke spanish so Casey spent most of the time talking to “John Travolta” and “Blackie” the dog who followed us the entire time. I was subjected to an interrogation from our guide who wanted to know how much everything costs in the states including beers, movies, cars, etc. So we went rode on to another viewpoint overlooking the city and were subjected to a rather dismal view. 4 hours later we returned the horses tired and disappointed. Our tour was to have included hot springs and a waterfall which we saw nothing of. So we went back to our hostel and decided to do some hiking the next day in the hills.
We left around 9am and took a path about 45 minutes up to the “Bellavista Mirador”. This lookout had a great view of the city and surprise surprise the sun was out! We decided to continue along another path to the town of Runtun about 2km uphill which was to have an outlook of the volcano. The path was very steep, muddy and at times hard to follow but we finally found the small village up in the hills and made our way to the volcano, we had only walked about 5 mintues when a local man flagged us down and told us to come to his house for some tea and held out a hand of tea leaves (if that is really what they were). The whole time I am thinking “yeah right…axe murderer! run!” The guy is also eyeing up my camera bag and I am worried because we are in the middle of nowhere and keep walking away trying to get away from this guy. He mean while is explaining that you cant see the volcano because of the cloud cover high in the hills and walks with us a little ways to demonstrate. Damn if he isnt right, we cant see any of the smoking volcano, so he tells us to take this path back to the town of Banos its the quickest and best path and shows us to the start of the path. then holds out his hand and asks for a “little tip” for his help which we didn’t ask for! So we fork over .50 and start walking very quickly down the path and looking over our shoulders hoping he isn’t following us. I grabbed a stick to beat him with if he were to try anything. But in about 45 mins we did make it back to town safe and sound.
For our last day in Banos we decided to try something new and booked a Canyoning trip. We arrived at the office around 9 am were given a wetsuit, shoes, climbing harness, & helmet. We got dressed and climbed into the back of a truck and headed out of the city for about 15 minutes. We pulled up to a set of waterfalls that were as high as you could see. So we jumped out of the truck and were given basic safety instructions and shown how to lower ourselves down the falls. Diego our guide was super nice and patient. By the time we walked to our first waterfall to go down Casey was getting a little scared. Casey made me go down the first fall which was probably about 18 feet high. It actually wasn’t too bad. You clip the rope into your harness and lower yourself down. The guide was great and talked you through it step by step. It was pretty crazy you are pretty much walking down a stone wall in the middle of a waterfall.
Each fall we did afterwards was either bigger or more technically difficult. Sometimes you had to jump across the falls to the other side with the water pouring down on top of your head and othertimes you had to lower yourself down slippery rocks into a cave. The last waterfall was the biggest at about 90 feet high and by far the scariest!! You clipped in on a small cliff edge overlooking the dropoff and then lowered yourself onto your knees until the rock dropped away to nothing and you were suspended in midair with the waterfall dropping off all around you. Completely amazing and scary at the same time. At first I had such a death grip on the rope I couldn’t even lower myself down, but at the guides encouragement I slowly let out the rope and started my descent. I stayed at the bottom and took some pictures of Casey’s decent. I went slowly but it was kind of neat just hanging there with the waterfall all around you. I climbed up and did it a second time. Casey had decided she had enough excitement and stayed below to watch. The second time down, I let loose and flew down the 90 feet in a couple of seconds. At the end we thought it was the most fun we had in Banos, and would do it again. Our muscles were sore so we relaxed the rest of the day and prepared to pack up our stuff for the bus ride out. It would prove to be a long bus ride.
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