22/06/2019 – Travel day, Banos to Cuenca

We got up and packed our things before heading upstairs to the hostel restaurant for a quick smoothie bowl and coffee. We grabbed our bags and checked out, and caught a taxi a couple of minutes down the road to the bus station. We already had our tickets, so found our bus, dropped our luggage underneath and jumped into our seats, hand luggage on our laps. Half an hour into our journey Josh needed the toilet so much that he asked the driver, who pulled the bus over and he had to go on the side of the road in front of the passengers! The bus skirted along the edges of some beautiful green and mountainous landscapes. A little way into the journey there was a crash a few cars ahead, so we got delayed in standstill for an hour or so. We continued on and arrived at the bus station after about 8 hours of travelling, at about 17:00. We got a taxi to our homestay ‘Casa Rumi’ and got welcomed in and shown to our room by our host Gary. I was out of battery on my phone after listening to spotify on the journey, so asked Josh for the adaptor and charger. This is when we realised we had left the plug adaptor and both iphone/ipad leads in Banos. Oops! Having not eaten or drunk since our early breakfast this did not put Josh in the best of moods! Realising this, we quickly got ourselves in a taxi into town to a Thai restaurant called Thai Connections. We filled our boots with phad thai, which sorted us out no end, and then wandered around the city a little bit. It is soooo refreshing to be somewhere safe enough to walk around at night! It is a picturesque city, cobbled stones and colonial buildings. Even though it is the third biggest city in Ecuador and has a small festival on this weekend it still feels very small and quiet! We walked home along the river ‘Rio Tomebamba’ and stumbled across an outdoor music festival venue, with a small crowd bopping along to someone playing the live accordion fused with some background beats! Not a mix I have seen or heard before! We found a shop selling a cheap iphone charger so bough one of those, and borrowed a plug adaptor from our host Gary to charge the laptop with. We walked home and got showered and into bed for the night. It felt freezing (about 10°C) so we had to get into our silk liners for warmth!