Banos

Banos
Tuesday, November 17th- Thursday, November 19th

Banos is one of Ecuadors busiest tourist towns and is known as the "gateway to the amazon". We all went to Banos for the first night.  Brad did a hike with us on Wednesday and then left to climb the volcano Illiniza.  The Tungaharua Volcano is South America's most active volcano.  The few days we were there it was definitely active.  In fact we learned on Wednesday night the government had raised the code to orange because of the amount of ash being emitted (see pictures below).  Once learning this, we decided to leave a day early.

Banos at night.

Looking down into Banos, you can see the green houses in the center.  Roses are Ecuador's biggest export.  You see these rows of greenhouses all over the country. The main importers are the United States, Italy, Russia, Germany and Canada.

We hiked up and over the hill on the left.

Asa checking in to see how much longer we had.

The popular avocado tree.

Rose bushes growing along the road.

You can see how the city sits right on the banks of the river.

The Tungaharua Volcano was fairly active while we were in Banos.

The route of the cascades is a popular tour in Banos. The road follows the canyon river and there are many waterfalls along the way.  There are a variety of ziplines across the river.

We took a hike down that followed the waterfall in the front left below.  There was another route on the other side that went all the way to the river below.

Two swing bridges got you down to the waterfall.

Sights from the bus: Banos- Riobamba

Notice how the land is farmed all the way to the top of the mountain.

Unlike the united states where we have huge areas of one crop, you can see all the different kinds of plants growing on each plot of land.

Bamboo Plants

Water containers that you see on many of the roofs.

Some of the towns we drove through were covered in ash from the eruptions of Tungaharua.

You can see a bit of the orange roof, but mostly it is covered in ash.

A view of