Banos, Ec. Sept 25-27

     Sept 25- Today was our first day in Banos, and WOW is it ever stunning. It is in the middle of this huge lush valley and is home to over 53 waterfalls! we can see a big waterfall from the balcony of our hostel. We explored Banos and found out that our guide book didn`t emphasize the point of ``tourist town`` enough...I think there are more tourists than locals. Every second biulding is an adventure tour business offering bridge jumping, white-water rafting, Amazon tours, and canopy (zipline) tours. It`s touristy for a reason though, the INCREDIBLE beauty of the place is pretty magical. There are also lots of candy stores, selling hand-made taffy that you can see being made in the store, they stretch it out over a wooden peg in the doorframe. A big church can be seen from everywhere in town and it was only a few blocks away from our hostel so we decided to go check it out. It was impressive, with lots of big paintings of the Virgin Mary saving people from bad happenings, including a volcano eruption. The church is dedicated to the Virgin, who the people say is the reason the volcano hasn`t erupted in the past 13 years. 
After walking around for a few hours we went to the grocery store, and by this time is was dark out and we had forgot to write down the cross-streets of our hostel. Robbie and I walked around trying to find our hostel for an hour, laughing our asses off because we had walked by the same park 4 times. We decided to get a nice cup of coffee to help get our poop in a group. It was reeealllyy good real coffee, not instant Nescafe (thank god). We finally found the hostel after figuring out where we were. 

26- At night, you can see a this huge glowing cross is the sky (not actually in the sky, it`s on a mountain, but you can`t see the mountain at night). Robbie and I decided to hike up to the cross and get a nice view of the town. It was a pretty sweet hike, kinda rainforest-y. When we got to the cross after half an hour, we had a snack then decided to hike further to the tiny village of Runtun. We had to follow a paved road for a bit, then more forst paths. We walked past tomato greenhouse after tomato greenhouse, with cows everywhere. We both thought we were lost because it seemed to take foreer to get to the village, but we finally got there and had a coffee (which was instant unfortunately)at this little family-run cafe. There were 2 kittens and one excited dog to join us for coffee. Our legs were kinda pooched so we decided to try and bum a ride back down to town. All we had to do was walk down the paved road and 2 trucks later, one hoked his horn and asked ``Banos?", "Si senor!" we replied and jumped in his little truck. The driver was playing traditional Ecuadorian folk music which was a nice change from all the reggaton we had been hearing. When we got to town, Robbie and i decided to look for a reliable company for a canopy tour the next day. After checking out a few, I looked up reviews for each company on the net and decided on a good one. we went back and booked a tour for the next morning.    
27-CANOPY TOUR WAS EPIIICCCC!!! There were 6 different ziplines, each longer than the previous, measuring out to 2000m in total. Holy jesus I can't believe we ziplined over the freakin rainforest! If anyone ever comes to Ecuador, they must do a canopy tour. There were a few different positions you could choose from on each line, ex. normal, superman (having your legs strapped in so you lie on your stomach and go headfirst), bat (being upside-down with legs in a V), and butterfly (the guide goes with you and holds your legs upside down while you hold your arms out). Superman was our favorite because you got a great view of the forest below. When the canopy tour was over we were wet and muddy, but we didn't care! We got to zipline over the forest! When it we got back to town it was jst past noon, so we decided to walk to the other side of Banos after lunch. We saw a guy bridge-jump, which was cool. the view from the other side was great! we could see 5 waterfalls! Then it started to rain so we walked back to the hostel. After dinner we decided to check out the nightlife in Banos (though Thursday night isn`t the best tim to go FYI..). There was an awesome-looking bar called jack Rock that had Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones lips painted on the outside so that was our bar of choice. There were some other tourists inside playing pool. We bought the cheapest beers we could and sat on the upper-level of the bar, getting a good view of all the classic rock posters that were all over the walls. When we had finished our beers we walked down the street to see if there were any clubs/bars that had people in them..no luck. Bedtime.