Week 19. Banos, Cuenca, Saraguro and Vilcabama

 Week 19.Tuesday. Banos is know for adventure activities so today we hired some mountain bikes ($7) and went on a 20km down hill adventure to see the Pailon del Diablo waterfall.

Luckily, on the way back, there was a truck waiting outside the waterfall car park which we quickly paid to take us back up to Banos for a fee of $10 - no brainer really! Not sure if our legs would have been able to survive the 21km uphill!

Wednesday. While we stayed in Banos we could hear the nearby erupting volcano (it sounded like thunder) but we could not actually see where the volcano was due to low lying clouds. While on the bus which we caught after breakfast, to head to Cuenca, we saw exactly where all the noise was coming from! Amazing!! Now I understood why all the cars in Banos were covered in ash!

Wow!!! View from inside the bus

The ride to Cuenca only took 6 hours so we arrived in time to explore the city for a few hours in the evening - mainly admiring the churches. Afterwards we ate some delicious Thai food at La Joya Thai restaurant which satisied our chili needs!

Thursday. Cuenca is a lovely city and we both agreed that is was our favourite city so far in Ecuador. We wondered around the food and flower markets and walked endlessly around the pretty streets, finally settling down for something to eat at a nice Argentine restaurant, La Esquina for some serious steak and wine - delicious!!

Roland likes to think that he is a connoisseur - hehehehe!

We were staying at the Alternative Hostel ($20) in Cuenca which is where I managed to add some decoration to the walls! Adding a powdered form of fruit cordial to a bottle of sparkling water was not a good idea!  As soon as the powder mixed with the water, an eruption took place, spraying the entire room with frothy lemon flavour liquid - oops!

Friday. We decided to break up the journey to Vilcabamba and stay 1 night in a place called Saraguro. The journey to here took about 5 hours. We were hoping to see some interesting things here, including some beautifully dressed local Saraguro Indigenous people but unfortunately we only saw an ok-ish main plaza.  The main day to visit is on Sundays when the village comes alive. Oh well!

Tried to take a sneaky photo of the lady to the left of Roland

We were expecting to see more local people like these ...

Saturday - Tuesday. On Saturday we woke early to make our way to Vilcabamba. By 9am we were on the bus towards Loja (1.5 hours, $3.5). Once at Loja we changed buses and an hour later ($1.5) we were at our lovely hostel Le Rendez Vous.

It was a lovely hostel and well worth the $35 a night which included a lovely breakfast.  We had our own little cabin in the middle of the beautiful garden with a hammock to swing in while watching butterflies.

The butterflies loved this bush

Avocado!

Vilcabamba is know to the locals as the "Playground of the Inca" which refers to its historic use as a retreat for Incan royalty. It is also know as the Valley of Longevity and the area is considered to have the oldest inhabitants in the world! 

We did see quite a lot of old people here, however they were not indigenous but mainly retirees from France and America!!

Many people come to Vilcabamba to relax and that is exactly what we did! We did manage to venture out for a couple of 3-4 hour walks in the surrounding countryside to earn some yummy food at the local restaurants. 

"Get me outta here!!!"

We ate well here and would fully recommend the onion rings and chicken wings at Timothy`s, pizza at Shanta`s (do not try the snake juice - it was FOUL!!), crepes at Suzette`s and soups/salads at The Juice factory.

The onion rings were amazing!!

"Hmmmm not sure about this snake juice!"

"Hoooooooooop" it was disgusting!! Pity there wasnt an after photo!