18/06/2019 Travel day, Quito to Banos, Ecuador

We had coffee in bed and then some croissants before packing up our things. Our bags are bulging after mum and dads deliveries! We took as many free bars of soap as possible, ordered our Uber and thanked Dirk. We hopped in our car and got taken to the Quitumbe bus station, about a 30 minute drive away in the South of Quito. Our Uber driver kindly took us inside what would otherwise have been a very confusing bus station, and took us right up to the correct vendor that we needed to buy our ticket from. It was so kind of him as he didn’t speak any English and also probably had to pay for a parking ticket in order to do it! We bought our tickets, had a quick toilet stop and then were ushered very quickly onto a bus heading to Banos. The journey seemed very quick, it took about 4 hours. We hopped in a taxi and got dropped to out hostel ‘Selina’. We booked in and found our room before heading up to the bar and restaurant for a coffee and snack. It is a huge and fairly new hostel, decked out nicely in a Scandiniavian style. Simple but effective! With our genius discount on Bookings we managed to get a pretty good deal. However, it has a different vibe to our cosy local hostels we have used up until now, more of a party vibe, it even offered a free welcome shot. I said to Josh it must mean we are old if we haven’t bothered to get it! We went and spoke to Sebastian from the hostel who gave us some advice about excursions and activities in Banos. A bit later we walked to the ‘Las Piscinas de la Virgin’ the local thermal baths, and had to buy ourselves some funny cloth hats on entry. It was pretty run down, but in a kind of charming way. It had a great atmosphere and was buzzing with locals socialising. We got our bimmers on, skipped the cold pool and went straight for the medium. It was so warm that we ended up sitting on the edge with our legs dangling in. We were in the medium pool for most of the time. It is on the rooftop right next to a waterfall, it was lovely! Then we braved the hot pool on the lower floor. It was absolutely scorching, apparently 42°C. We could barely get in, but forced ourselves to go into the armpits and then jump out again. The locals were laughing at us because we couldn’t handle it! It is amazing that the water can come from the earth and be so scorching hot! We dipped back into the comfortable medium temperature pool and then collected our stuff and got changed. We walked down the road to ‘Café Hood’ a restaurant recommended in the lonely planet, and had some nice curries for dinner. Then we walked back to the hostel to get some rest.