Day 39 - Banos Waterfalls by Quad

We only have 24hrs in Banos since our bus to Lima leaves at 3am tomorrow morning so we got to make the most of it & see as much as possible. So what better way to sightsee then to get quads & drive around really fast?! $20 for 3hrs happy days! Ellen from the hostel was keen to tag along & see some sights so we brought her for the spin. We zoomed outta town & headed for the famous waterfalls. Myself & Ro drove full speed the wrong way into a one-way tunnel during the excitment of it all! When I say tunnel I mean a cave carved out of the mountain, pitch dark! We only reliased our mistake when we discoverd headlights bearing full speed in our direction. The driver managed to spot us slow down & scream "are you suicidal?.....no but thanks anyways!"

So we carried on in one piece to see Rio Blanco falls up close. It was a 1km hike from the road so the viewing point. There's a little crawl space that brings you up right behind the falls! Ro thought he'd never fit but we managed to squeeze him up. I manged to break my camera in the process aswell. There's also a rope bridge about 100ft over the river that gives a view of the falls so we had lots of fun putting the fear of god into Ellen by bouncing up & down.

After be got back to Banos we got some dinner, said goodbye to Ellen & we reluctantly hoped on last bus back to Quito. It would have been great to chill here for a few days but that`s the nature of backpacking, there's always something else to see gotta keep moving.

Some crafty thief on the bus managed to discretly slash Ro & Charlie's bags from underneath the seats! We we're dreading getting back to that hole of a bus station in Quito, especially after dark considering how bad it was in broad day light the day before! But we literally jumped from the bus right into a cab & got the hell outta there.

We met up with Luke back at the Secret Garden for a few beers & his ex-friend/ special friend who just got in from Oz. I hope they have lots of fun traveling around together........White Lotus Luke! wink wink nod nod!!

Joe