Travel Day 015 – Banos, ECUADOR
My Traveling Classroom not only had the goal to teach me Spanish, but also to show me a little bit more of Ecuador and so the planned activity of the day was a bike ride to some waterfalls in the mountains…
Outskirts and Mountains of Banos, Ecuador
After some nice breakfast in a local café, we rented two old mountain bikes and set off for the waterfalls. The scenery was beautiful with lush green mountains, but the ride was a bit exhausting since it was hot and we had to go up and down the hilly terrain. Along the way we passed a lot of interesting buildings that would have been so illegal in other countries and could only be considered a disaster from an architectural point of view. But to me everything was extremely interesting to look at and the bike ride was great fun. I especially really enjoyed the fact that we saw a little bit beyond the well trodden gringo trail and even got to talk to some local people here and there… : )
Once we arrived at the waterfalls, we had to do a little bit of hiking to actually reach them. They were almost hidden in the forest and quite nice to look at. Especially the cold water in the air was very refreshing on this hot day, but overall I thought that the journey had been more fun than the actual destination. While I liked seeing water falls, I never really got too excited about them. After we saw everything that was there to see, we hitched a ride back to town in a pick-up truck, had lunch and then continued with our Spanish class…
When we were done with the class, I used my spare time to walk around on a local market. It seemed that a lot of local people from the surrounding area had come to town in order sell their produce. I personally loved the colorful outfits of the Quechua people, especially the women with their dresses, hats and scarves. While these people were indigenous to the high lands, I had to enjoy their presence today, as we would leave them behind tomorrow when we continued our journey further down into the jungle of the Amazon region…
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