Banos - toilet, baths, or town?

So I think Leslie left off at the Black Sheep, from there we had a bit of a journey to get to Banos. It started with catching the local milk truck (aka a truck with a big barrel of milk in the back it). It arrived packed full of locals, but we managed to squish ourselves and our packs into the back of the truck. In doing so however, I fell out of the truck much to the amusement of everyone. Nonetheless, three hours later after having stopped at every property to either pick up their milk (from a not so clean bucket) or to deliver the milk to whom ever was standing on the side of the road with an empty bucket we arrived at the bus station. Three buses, a ride in the back of some random guy´s truck, and a taxi ride later (aka a solid 10 hours later) we had finally covered approximately 200 km and found ourselves at yet another fantastic hostel this time in Banos. After showering and washing away the exhaustion of the day, we hit the town for Leslie´s BIRTHDAY! Much to our amusement, the guys we danced the night away with came up to about our shoulders. We are giants in this country. The following day, we rented bikes and rode ¨La Ruta de las Cascadas¨ (highway of the waterfalls) to Machay stopping all along the way to hike to some of the falls and take a cable car across the valley. At Machay, we ended up swimming at the bottom of the falls before heading back to Banos to relax in the baths. Much like the hot springs in Canada, these baths are heated naturally by the active volcano (Tungurahua) that the town sits at the base of. This perfect day was finished off at an amazing little cafe (Casa Hood) that had the best milkshakes and also happened to be showing the english mountaineering movie Touching the Void just to cap off the evening. All in all, Banos won us over and although we were sad to leave, the Amazon jungle awaited us.

S, H, A, & L