I said I was done with the picture posts, but then we went away for the weekend and took LOTS of pictures. (Came home with over 800 pictures, to be exactly … and I am going to post them ALL here! And all three of my remaining readers will give up.)
Anyways, we spent our three-day day weekend in Banos, Tungurahua province — an easy 4-hour drive south of Quito. Banos sits on the side of an active volcano and is famous for the resulting hot springs. Because impending natural disasters are what make vacation FUN!
We stayed at the (very) high-end Samari spa resort, which was beautiful.
The room was very cozy, gardens were beautiful; breakfast was unremarkable, but they had free wi-fi! Also? They have a family of peacocks roaming around the grounds. That’s just cool. How do you get a peacock as a pet?? (And you think they’d get along with Shomi?)
There are tons of places to stay in Banos though so if we went again I think maybe we’d try someplace else… a wee bit less pricey.
We spent the day checking out some of the nearby waterfalls and “tarabitas” which apparently means “rickety basket ride thing that takes you scary high over a gorge.”
At $1/ride, it’s a total steal! We did two. They were less scary close up, although I was pretty nervous about them loading 15ish people into our basket for the ride back across the valley. (Don’t worry, we made it.)
And we took about a bazillion pictures of the mountains. Because they were pretty.
Tungurahua volcano.
Just pretty.
I would have taken 800 pictures too! Looks like a lovely getaway!
Gorgeous. Love the peacocks! My aunt who lives in Tenn. used to have peacocks–always loved that.