We left Cuenca on Sunday morning on the bus for Ambato, hoping that the bus change to Baños would be relatively straightforward.

The road from Cuenca to Ambato was beautiful and rather scarey in places.  The driver was pretty sedate (helped somewhat by an underpowered bus) but the road itself travels high up the sheer mountainsides.

It is quite amazing how the local people farm the land here - it seems no slope is too steep if there is some soil on it.  Many plots look impossibly dangerous for the farmers in their gumboots - one slip and there would be no stopping.  But the farmer we met on our walk last night seemed cheerful and happy to share the tiny muddy path with us gringos.

Baños is a little lower in altitude at 1800m.  It is on a small area of flat valley bottom, surrounded by nearly sheer hillsides, climbing hundreds of meters above the town.  The volcano Tungurahua is behind, but not visible from the town, rising over 3000m!  No volcano climbing though, it is active and potentially dangerous.

We started off at a lovely hostal 30min walk from the town center - La Casa Verde.  It is run by a Kiwi-Aussie couple.  Sitting in the dining room one afternoon, working diligently on our Spanish, we spotted 3 hummingbirds feeding on flowers right outside the windows.

Sadly our stay at La Casa Verde was only for 4 nights as they had a big group booking.  We did get a free upgrade to one of their best rooms the first night!

Our first proper walk took us up the nearly vertical hillside behind the hostal, up, up and up.  It was not a climb for the fainthearted; the track was just the farmers' path, muddy and slippery and ridiculously exposed in places.  There were some excellent veiws on the way up, including across a side valley to las cascadas de chamana.

After a lung popping hour up it we made the BellaVista lookout.  We made the descent back into Baños on the established trail, nearly meeting some crazy downhill mountain bikers a little too closely.

Just before the trail ended in town we saw two beautiful big butterflies.  They had about a 20cm wingspan and flittered around us for a couple of minutes - just beautiful.

Sadly our stay at La Casa Verde was only for 4 nights as they had a big group booking.  We did get a free upgrade to one of their best rooms the first night!

We are now staying at Hostal Princesa Maria, located in town (so we´ve exchanged hummingbirds for more roosters).  However, it is less than half the price and we still have a nice room.  It´s the big blue building with the red roof - we´re in the room with the lower right hand window.  There is quite a nice veiw over town too.

On Thursday it was cloudy and not the greatest weather after our classes finished, but I was determined that we should do some more climbing, hopefully rewarded with a stunning view of the volcano.  The inital trail led up some 650 steps to a large statue of the Virgin Mary, looking proudly over Baños.  Then an easy traverse before another lung popping effort, fortunately on a much safer path.

We climbed a total of 650m, according to Ben's altimeter.  It felt like a looooong way up, and boy, it felt like  a long way down too.  Here I am at the Mirador del Vulcan (lookout of the volcano).  Sadly the clouds did not clear, so I´m holding up a pictorial representation . . .

The whole trip took up 3.5hrs, the guidebooks say 4-5hrs, so we didn´t feel we´d done too badly.

The Friday morning español lessons were greatly enlivened by the small childrens´ school downstairs putting on a show for their parents.  Quite hilarious with games and even with our basic Spanish we could follow along.

Friday afternoon the weather was really good for Baños, ie actual sunshine.  I really wanted to see the darn mountain top, which you can´t see from town, so we hired a moto.

This seemed like a great idea in the relative safety of the Baños streets, but the guy who rented it to us persuaded us to take it down the highway on the Ruta de Las Cascadas.  There were rough bypasses for all tunnels except the first (long, dark) tunnel.  Ben drove and reports that the brakes were somewhat lacking and there was a lot of play in the steering.  Plus it was as noisy as all get out, especially coming back up the hill.  However, it was pretty fun, and an easy way to have a look down the valley.

As the name of the route states, there are a lot of waterfalls to look at.  Along the way you can go rafting (no thanks, the water of the main rivers is none too clean), ziplining across the gorge (definitely no thanks, who knows when the gear was last checked), bridge swinging (ditto) and also on a tarabita - a sedate cable car type affair that crosses the gorge.  I rather wanted to go on one, but we ran out of time.

At the turn around point is Rio Verde, where a major tributary joins the river.  The waterfall there is truly spectacular, even to somewhat waterfall-spoilt Kiwi eyes.

We left the moto at the top, passed lots of little stalls selling trinkets and one where you could have your picture taken with a live boa.  I declined, based on the fact we had no idea what condition the snake was kept in - it was shut in a box when no-one was having photos done . . .

After walking downhill for 10min we paid $1.50 to get up close and personal with El Pailon del Diablo.  I crawled up another 20m (all safely enclosed) to a little cave behind the waterfall.

It was incredible and even a little scary - the enormous speed, volume and force of all that water roaring down into a boiling pool.  I was pretty wet by the time I rejoined Ben for the swing bridge.

You can just make out people at two of the viewing points here; the little pale dots about a third of the way down the inital fall, slightly to the right, and the red dots two thirds down, right next to it.

The swing bridge:

Even though Rio Verde is not much lower than Baños it feels slightly more tropical and we saw a few variety of lovely butterflies.  It´s too busy for any interesting birds unfortunately.

From here, the highway continues roughly east, dropping down to Puyo, in the Amazon basin, only 1.5hrs on the bus.  We contemplated doing a tour down there, but it´s not exactly pristine jungle - when the tour operators talk about walks to see medicinal plants, not even birds, much less animals, well . . .

We came back up the highway and were rewarded with glimpses of the top of  Tungurahua.

Today, Saturday, has been very wet - like Baños can often be.  A lazy day in town with a long blog update was on the cards.  Now it's 4:45 and the sun has come out.  We´re planning a decent hike tomorrow, weather dependant.