Banos

I´m wary of overly praising every town we stop in, but I really like Banos. Its a medium sized town nestled in a valley. The mountains tower over every side of it, patchworks of trees and square farm fields cut onto the nearly vertical mountainsides. To the north of town an active volcano looms, occasionally rumbling and spurting out clouds of ash or fiery glowing rocks. To the south is a deep canyon with a rushing river.

We´ve been here since Saturday, taking Spanish lessons at a school around the corner from our hotel. Our Spanish teacher is a 26 yr old Ecuadorian named Marco. He´s very nice and a good teacher. He likes to say Wow a lot, in his accent it sounds like Hwow. He puncuates most everthing with Hwow. I like him.

We went for a hike up one of the mountains yesterday. It was a steep hour long climp to the lowest summit on one of the ridges surrounding Banos. There were two cafes at the top and amazing views of the town and the ash spewing volcano. The top of the Volcano was covered in clouds, but you could hear it rumbling and see the ash spewing over the top of the cloud cover. I had a beer at the cafe and alternated between watching doll sized Banos, and the volcano, nice afternoon.

This morning we actually got up at 6:00am and went running then went to the thermal baths, La piscinas de la Virgen. They´re hotter than our hot tub and busy at 6:00am.

We´re thinking about coming back to Banos in December and staying here for a month, taking more Spanish lessons and enjoying the town.