Bathrooms, long days and Panama Hats

As a sit in the Ecuadorian internet cafe with Che Guevara plastered on the walls and speakers blasting local spanish tunes I wonder how we made our way here. Through mountains and clouds, beggars and tunnels, stuffy buses and bad food we managed to make our way to the beautiful town of Cuenca in Southern Ecuador.



Banos, a town that actually means bathroom, known for its thermal natural springs (although excited at first to try them out they were full of very wringly people in bikinis so decided not sure a good idea, plus the water was very brown for some reason..hmmm maybe not) was a great city full of panaramic views of mountains, clouds, and waterfalls. I
t has the 10th highest waterfall in the world (i think), called the devil..we walked to see this and stood in ore of its grandeur. I took some spanish lessons here too to try and improve, fluency is the aim. Ill get there. Terry also went on an adventure trek (so him) to the local cable cars that are about 300 metres from the river bed below and rocked like they were tied by a piece of string rather than any kind of aluminium cable. Unfortunately for Tel and our two friends, Margarita and Nic, they took the wrong cable car and ended up walking for about 5 hours up and down mountains, through local village houses, getting directions from people who have never even seen westerners and getting back to camp just in time for dinner although very late and dark at the time. Was funny to look back on but they were exhausted! I was on cook group this night, so stayed back to make everyone falafel wraps, they went down a treat!

After Banos, we had a full day on the truck, driving up and down beautiful scenery and stopping for lunch with views over the cloud invested mountains.

We stopped off for a toilet stop and met with the locals having a party! We danced and drank thier local brew..or was forced too! Was so cool!


Our next stop was Cuenca, where we are now. Cuenca is a lovely town, full of cathedrals, churches, old buildings and happy people.


We chilled out with some sheisha last night in a dubai style bar and hit bed early, catching a few flicks on the TV. Its been a few weeks since we have been able to do that! We woke up this morning to a procession of schools through the streets, local dancers, musicians and circus styles acts followed and was well worth the watch. The sun was out, the music was playing and we were dancing. Travelling gives you such a feeling of freedom that ive been loving for the past 2 weeks.






Cuenca is the home of the Panama hat, so we are going to go se if we can get one made for us now. Very Stylish. We also went to see some more shrunken heads, tribal need for the retention of intelligence, cant see us doing that in the UK.

Peru tomorrow, we are crossing the border early as we heard there are going to be riots at the border due to the government trying to charge people for water. The war over water is beginning.

Adios!