Swinging through the clouds

Our last stop in Ecuador was Banos. The city with 13000 inhabitants and vedge between volcanos and the amazon forest, and being famous for their adventure activities. There was rock climbing, paragliding and a 2 day jungle trek on my bucketlist during our 3 day stay. Unfortunately things don't always go as planned and my body decided that all I would do was rest in the bus for 2 days. After a visit to the extremely impressive public hospital  (Europe you could learn a thing or two from the Ecuadorian welfare system!) I was finally able to tick one thing of my bucketlist at least: a visit to Casa del Arbol, the tree house. We paid $1 to take the local bus up the mountain to 2660m above sea level. We paid another dollar to enter what can only be described as an adult playground with zip lining and giant swings over the edge of the mountain. The main one was the swing connected to the lookout platform which was the tree house.

So there we were swinging over the edge of a cliff, into the clouds at 2660m above sea level. Whilst two Ecuadorian men sat in the tree house playing guitar and singing.

After a few hours of embracing our inner child we set off on a hike back down to Banos together with our new found friend, companion and local guide who we named Kexet aka Cookie. (This name comes from the (in)famous pickup line "hello cookie, are you standing here crumbling?")


It took us just over 2 hours to make our way down the 860m decent to Banos through stunning lookout points along the way. With shaky legs we arrived back, ready for our last night in Banos and Ecuador before heading south towards Peru in the morning. So a final shout out to Ecuador, to a country rich in history and culture, incredible nature and wildlife and most importantly kind and caring people who welcomed us with open arms. 

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