Ambato and Banos, Ecuador by Mel

Hello everyone,
We are still in Ecuador but a bit more south now.
On Monday the 6th of November, we woke up early, around 5.30am. We got dressed, grab a taxi to take us to the bus terminal. I had bought some tickets online with 12go, but apparently, even after several message from me, they were not capable to tell me if I was going to get my tickets or not. We left in the morning with no tickets, so we wanted to get there early to make sure we’ll find a bus. We did not need to worry, as we found a bus easy peasy. In South America, we found out that online booking is not necessary, not effective: you just need to go to the bus station and you’ll find a bus easy enough.
We got in and it took us around 2 and a half hours to get to Ambato.
Ambato is known as the flower and fruits city. They even have a flower and fruit festival in February I think. Because we left Quito super early, not knowing how easy it will be to get a bus, we arrived super early too. Too early to check in. We found a little place which made empanadas to spend a couple of hours before we could check in.
Our place is pretty good: big, but the view is the main thing. Ambato is built around the Ambato river and our flat is right on the river but higher up, so we have a massive view of the surrounding mountains and the river. That is really cool.
We settled a bit as usual and then, as usual went in search of a small supermarket to do some grocery shopping. We found one and did our shopping. We got surprised when we went over $50, we got asked some ID. Life is pretty cheap here, and wages are not very high either, so maybe $50 is a big shopping. We are not sure. Anyway, we paid and went back toward our place. On the way, we came upon a street full a market stalls selling anything and everything, but a lot of fruit and vegetables. We got a few different fruits we never saw before and a chorizo, that we learnt is one of the specialities around here. Kev and the kids tasted it later and they all loved it!
After that, we came back and did our normal night routine (no that we have one, but you know!) movie night and bed.
Tuesday, we visited the city. There are a few things to visit around the city, but nothing big. We started with El Casa Del Portal, a museum with paintings from different Ecuadorian painters: some were portraits, some landscapes, some more modern. We even recognised some of the things we visited in Quito in some of the landscapes. We then visited the main basilica, which is pretty recent as the city was almost fully destroyed in 1949 by earthquake. It was built where the old basilica was, but in a much modern style. The inside is very clean and white and bright. The few paintings inside are full of light and I liked it. After that we went to another small museum which had some information about the trades of Ecuador, some traditional clothes and some mural paintings that we enjoyed looking at all the details. While we were there, some people were filming a small commercial for an event they will have there over the following weekend and asked us to say a couple of sentences in English along the lines of: “it is a great event for families and don’t miss it”. We agreed to do it (you know, it was fun!) even if we didn’t really know what it was for. We found out after that it was a small event with Mangas and music.
The next thing we visited was the casa del Montalvo. Juan Montalvo was an Ecuadorian essayist and novelist from the 19th century. He was strongly opposed and a big critic of the presidents/dictators of Ecuador at the time. He was exiled for over 20 years and died in Paris. He is a very well know and loved author in Ecuador. As he was born in Ambato and his body has been brought back in Ambato, you can visit his house and learn about him. The kids should have done a bit of research on him (I haven’t checked yet!), so if you are interested go have a look at their blog.
For lunch that day, we found a type of cafeteria where we had a very good lunch for $8 (for the four of us)!! Food is very cheap here, especially if you go where the locals go! It is always cheap and delicious! The traditional lunch here is a soup, a main which is often rice and either chicken or beef (sometime pork) with a bit of salad and a juice. And again all that for $2 each! Also during the day, we picked up a few snacks: one was a sweet bread with caramel inside (delicious) and one was chips with a tangy sauce and nuts. Food is good here!
We wanted to do one more museum, but it was close when we arrived (to Emma’s delight) and we went back to our place. The kids did a bit of schoolwork and then we rested.
Wednesday we visited the botanical garden. It was a lot bigger than expected and we spend a few hours in there. Ecuador has a lot of orchids (I think I mentioned that in a previous blog) and there seems to be botanical garden in a lot of cities. This one was very lovely, with big hummingbird statues, a lot of flowers and plants. It made a lovely morning walking over there.
When we were getting hungry with found another one of those places who served the typical soup, main and juice and had another great lunch. The kids played in a playground we found and after a while we came back to our place to meet the owner who wanted to shoot a video of the appartement but then decided otherwise (maybe because he saw our mess, which I had warned him about!) Anyway, regular end of the day!
Thursday, we took a bus to go to Banos, a town one hour bus drive from Ambato. This is known as the place to do all the extreme activities in Ecuador. We had booked through WhatsApp (this is a must have app when you are traveling as a lot of booking go through that) the day before, for a 2-day tour over there. It was hard to pick what to do as there is a lot in offer!
We woke up early, jumped into a taxi (they are everywhere here: yellow taxis absolutely everywhere) then in a bus direction Banos. We left early as usual as we had to be there by 9m and we didn’t want to be late, so we arrived around 7.30am! We found a coffee place to wait, while having coffee and sweet stuffs. While we were in the coffee place, 2 musicians dressed in traditional Ecuadorian clothes came and played pan flute and guitar.
Banos is a very touristic place. The streets are full of tour companies, restaurant orientated to tourists, hotels and shops selling souvenirs. The more we travel, the less I like those places. They all look the same: the only thing that change is the type of souvenirs they sell in shops. I am not going to lie: I do buy magnets everywhere we go (almost) and we use tours in some places, but I feel like those cities are losing their spirit a bit. Ambato is Ecuadorian, Banos is tourist city. I wish we could find a just middle where there are touristic places but also still feel like the country is still there and not disappearing under tourist pressure.
Anyway, at 9am we started our adventure tour. We tried some bikes. They had to find a smaller one for Emma and off we went. Well, we had to pay a little bit of extra for a van to follow us. The guide we had, Roberto, didn’t seem to sure Emma could do the whole trip, so he advises us to have the van following, so if needed, Emma could use the car.
We started our tour riding in the town first and then sharing road with big bus, trucks and cars. It was a bit scary at time, but all went well. We stopped to look at a couple of waterfalls. For one of them, we took a cable car that was run by what seem to be an pretty old engine…It worked, so all good! The cable car took us above the waterfall and with a bit of a rough stop, let us have a look at the landscape. As everything natural here, it is beautiful. Volcanos, hills, valley, rivers, waterfalls…. The scenery is magnificent.
On the way, we had the opportunity to do a zipline in the Superhuman position: laying on your tummy, headfirst flying down a 1025m long zipline at a speed between 70 and 110km/h. Andrew and Kev took the opportunity. Emma and I were happy to watch. For some reason, the superhuman position is not my favourite to go down zipline. Apparently it was great!
I have to give credit to Emma for her riding. She had a small bike, more BMX than road bike, so she had to work more than us (even on the downhill sections) and she did great! She took the car a few times (and she sat on the front seat, so she loved it) but did 2/3 of the road on her bike. Our legs were pretty tired by the end of it!
We finished the bike tour at ‘El Pailon del Diablo’, the cauldron of the devil. This is a waterfall located on the Rio Verde river (verde means green for the colour of the water) and merge into the Pastaza river just after the drop. It is an 80 meters drop making it the tallest waterfall in Ecuador. The rock formations around it are beautiful and made of volcanic rock, which give the dark colour and make the place even more dramatic. Some stairs have been added so you can go under the waterfall. There are a couple of hanging bridges to get to different areas of the waterfall. It was a great sight and we really enjoyed it.
There were obviously some little shops where Emma bought herself a ring. I bought a couple of magnets and a tiny pan flute, because you know!
This was the end of the riding part of the day.
Roberto took us to a local restaurant where we had fish from the Verde river: absolutely delicious! After lunch, off to the Casa del Arbor (the treehouse) which is famous for having a big swing called the swing at the end of the world. This is a big swing on the slop of a mountain, and when you are on it if feels like you are swinging into the nothing! I am not a big fan of swing (they make me sick), so I tried a smaller one, which my stomach did not like! The other 3 did the big one and loved it, especially Andrew. He could have stayed there forever!
There were also an area with a fair few hummingbird. If you don’t know what they are, here it is: they are small bird which can hover with the help of their very fast wings. They move incredibely fast and they are hard to take in pictures. I am very happy because one was very kind to me and stay still for a bit and I took a picture of it and then went off in flower close to us and I manged to get an ok picture of it while it was flying. I’m happy!
Then we went off for our last adventure of the day: ziplines!!!! Because apparently, we love zipline! This course was a 6 ziplines course adding to 2000 meters. There were regular sitting ziplines, some you could go upside down like a bat (only Andrew did it) and some on the superhuman position. I am getting comfortable on the sitting one, but the superhuman position is still slightly terrifying for me. I don’t like seeing the ground! If I look forward, I’m ok, but seeing the ground, scares me more! Anyway, I still did it! Emma was a bit worried, but ended up loving it!!! We drove back to Banos and got dropped to the place we were going to spend the night. We dropped our bag, rest for a little bit and then got in search of a place to have dinner. We found a vegetarian restaurant, where the service was pretty slow but the food was good. After that, as we were exhausted we went back to our room and straight to bed!
Friday was a slow start as we had no activity planned in the morning. We got up and got breakfast at a nearby place. It was included in the price, so we were expecting a small ish breakfast, but we had: fruits, juice, coffee, a couple of bread rolls each with butter and jam and scramble eggs. We were satisfied after that! We went to visit the church of Banos, which is made with volcanic rocks. It gives it a pretty gothic look. The inside is a mixed of the black rocks and white paint with flowery decorations. It is striking. Next to the church is a smaller “chapel” that look like a cave with a statue of Mary (I’m assuming) with fairy lights and decorations (which is pretty common here) and a lot of candles lit up. You can feel how important is the faith here.
There was also a small museum right next to the church that we went to visit. It was not very big, but there were some nice religious paintings, some religious clothes and artifacts, and one slightly creepy room with taxidermied animals.
We then found while walking around, a magical mystical land. I had found one the previous day while searching things to do, but it turned out it was close at the time we wanted to visit it. Hence why I was happy to find that other one which was open! Apparently, a few years back, an artist made fairies and other mystical creatures and made a garden with them that you could come and visit. It worked well and tourists came to see it. Obviously, more were created and there are now several of them. I have to admit it was nice to visit. You entre through a book portal and walk through different worlds: fairy land, dragon land, witch and wizard land (very Harry Potter inspired), unicorns, goblins, big spiders and dragonflies and gnomes were there too. It was fun. Some areas had dress-ups you could put on and take pictures with. We had a fun time there. We found a small place to eat with the traditional soup, main and juice and this time a small dessert as well. It was pineapple in jelly and was pretty good.
Then we left for our activity of the afternoon. Andrew was very much looking forward to this one. I was less! You guess it, it was something up high in the air again! We were going paragliding!!!
We thought that we would go together and as Emma didn’t want to do it, we decided that Andrew and I will go. I like pushing my limits (I’m not sure why)!! We met with Jonathan, our guide for the day and he drove us to one of the mountains around Banos where we met with Dario, who was going to be the one taking us in the air. Jonathan assured me that Dario had over 20 years of experience and all was safe. Andrew wanted to be first, but the winds were too strong for him, so I had to go first. Yeah…. I got striped to Dario and much sooner than expected, with no briefing on what to do, I was told “run!”. I’m sorry what, are we going now, I’m not sure I’m ready!!! Ok I run then! I took a couple of steps and we were up!!! It went so fast! The feelings up there are amazing. The views of the mountains around and the city in the valley are sensational. All you hear is the wind (and Dario telling me to relax). This is truly an amazing experience, and I am so glad I did it. It was not as scary as I thought it would be; don’t get me wrong, I was still holding onto the harness a fair bit, but I did truly enjoy the experience. As we were paragliding in a mountain area, there is always winds coming up, so we could take off and land at the same place. You do not go down. Dario being really good at what he is doing, did made us fly right above the fields with feet almost touching the long grass and then back above the valley and going around again. It was finish way too soon.
Andrew had to wait a fair bit for the wind to calm down. I think he was getting pretty stressed out that he wouldn’t do it. But at some point, Jonathan said: ‘your turn’ talking to Andrew and you should have seen the smile on his face! They put the harness on him and added a 10L water thing on his back to make him heavier! And they were up! Literally! He didn’t need to run, as soon as the parachute was up, 2 guys had to hold them as they were up straight away, then they let go and Andrew was gone. My mummy heart was a little bit worried to see my baby boy so far up in the air, but I knew how much Andrew love that kind of experience. He absolutely loved it. It said it was one of the best experiences he ever had!
As we were going one at a time, Kev decided to do it too! So it was his turn. While he was up there, Emma decided that she wanted to do it too. Hearing both Andrew and I talking about how wonderful it was, and watching her dad doing it, she wanted to have the experience too.
After Kev landed, it was here turn, with the 10L water thing on her back too obviously. She was up in the air with a massive smile on her face. I am so proud of her for doing it and pushing her limits. She is realising that she can do a lot more that she thought possible and loving every second of it. She is growing so much this year.
Andrew is too and developing his love for extreme activities! It is such a pleasure to watch them grow and developing who they are. This is one of the things I enjoyed the most this year. Just being with them and appreciating our time together.
After paragliding, Jonathan and Dario took us to a small shack on the side of the road with yummy food. Apparently, they always go there after a day of flying. We tried mita, some cornbread with cheese in the middle, absolutely delicious and kimbolito, a sweet warm bread wrapped in banana leaves, amazing! We also got some empanadas, some of the best we had some far. When we were full, we hailed a bus to take us back to Ambato. It was a great day!!
Saturday the 11th of October was a simple one. Schoolwork and blogging were done. We went out for lunch and a tiny bit of food shopping. We also had a look at the event we did the little video for a few days prior. There were a few stands selling manga related things. We bought a One Piece picture for Andrew and Emma got a necklace with a horse on it. It was pretty small, so after a tiny bit we got back to our place. Then game and movie night.
Sunday was similar. We finished the blog about here and Banos, went out for lunch and had one last walk in Ambato. We will have to pack as tomorrow we are taking another bus for our next destination, Cuenca a city a few hours south of here.
We’ll see you there!
MelLeia mais