Day 23 – 28 – Out of the Jungle

We arrived in Banos mid afternoon and after dumping the bags at the nearest hostel the first port of call was a cafe and some Spaghetti Bolognese. What little we had seen of Banos before the Amazon was pretty much the extent of the town so we had a lazy afternoon and relaxed whilst scratching all our remaining Amazon bites.
In the evening we headed up to some of the baths which make the town famous and spent a relaxing two hours swapping from the hot and tepid pools. The Virgin Baths as they’re called (everything in south America is about the virgin) were gorgeous, and set under a huge waterfall. They were rammed though, as all these old local focals rested their bodies in the natural mineral pools. We lasted it out for a while and then took our relaxed wrinkled bodies back to the hostel and were nicely wrapped up in bed at a decent hour – as is becoming the norm.
The next day we began our trip to Alausi for the Devil’s Nose train ride. We had read about this must see journey along massive cliff drop offs where you could see everything from the roof (although Japanese tourists had been killed on it a few years back, so the roof riding was still debateable) and stunning scenery so we figured it was a must and rushed down to Alausi. Alausi isn’t the most ex citing town. After a five hour trip and a stopover in Riobamba (which had pretty good pizza) we rocked up to the most deserted town I have ever seen. Cute enough, with a statue on the hill and an old lit up railway station, but a quick lap of the main street saw nothing of interest, including people, so we again tucked up for an early night.
The ride the next day was at 1.30pm and even with only an hour to kill (we checked out of the hostel at 12) we struggled to find things to do. When we got on the train there was no roof riding, but we were lucky enough to have snagged the two front seats so we had prime views. And the scenery was incredible; stunning hills, sheer drops, and reversing trains (which is a first), but very short. Within two hours we were back at our starting point and ready to get on yet another bus down to Cuenca.
After a slight false start, and some good Spanish improv from Lee, we boarded a four hour coach to Cuenca and rocked up to a decent hostel at around ten pm.
Cuenca was gorgeous and the debate between locals on Quito and Cuenca is an easy one as far as we’re concerned. Cuenca wins hands down. As we only had three days there we headed out on the streets early on the first day and took in the sights. That took about an hour, so after that we ate, booked a tour for our final day and lazed around the main square before taking an open top bus tour through the streets and checking out the town at night.
The next day we went to Ingapirca which is the largest Incan ruins in Ecuador, and the only place where both a sun and moon temple can be found (sun worship for the Incans and moon worship for the Canari). It was pretty impressive. Even more impressive than us managing to work out the local buses to get out there. Our guide was fantastic and a great storyteller, so we had the best experience of the place and it whet our appetite hugely for Machu Pichu.
On our last day in Ecuador we went to Cajas National Park which was stunning. It’s sort of the lakes district of Ecuador and our guide was brilliant.
So were the old couple who were with us, who constantly repeated in an American Drawl “I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life” and “You don’t get this back home”. They were lovely though and really made the park more special for us. After that we started the journey for Peru. This was to be a 21 hour journey in the end and something that we can now laugh about – only just!