As far as food, Banos has a bunch of interesting delicacies! Like freshly made toffee here... fresh right off the nail in the doorway. hehe. This is actually how they make it... they need to stretch it out several times before it is ready. Tastes alright, but I don't like the taste of anis (black licorice) that you find in so many foods here in Ecuador.
hey sell them on stands along with big chunks of fruit roll-up tasting candy (mmmmm).
Another specialty of the region is Sugar Cane drinks. But, being watchful of our health and knowing that these were cleaned with local water, we got one stand to shave a stick for us with a dried knife.
It was great chewing the stick... all this sweet water would come out!
Also for sale was rotisserie chicken and pizzas... very popular here.
And of course we had to take a ride of the caterpillar buggies that we find in every city or town here in ecuador. 50 cents per person for a ride around town! The funniest part of the ride was stopping to get gas at a gas station.
Dave, of course, preferred this tough looking rhino caterpillar buggy.
One of our most treasured memories from Banos (and Ecuador for that matter) is the bike ride along the Upper Amazon Basin.
We rented a bike for the day ($4 each per day) and set off towards the town of Puyo (even though we never got there).
The views were beautiful. The green mountains were gorgeous yet rugged-looking.
This is a picture from the roadside. Yep, from the curb, the hillside went straight down.
Another beautiful picture of the canyon and river that we followed all along our trip.
We rode our bikes along the road which is called "Waterfall Avenue", for reasons you will see in these next few pictures. Here is our first waterfall... which produced a beautiful rainbow.
Another waterfall, this one being a very skinny one.
At one point, we had to ride into a dark tunnel with no lights!! We had to ride ahead without being able to see the road (just the light ahead of us)... I was so worried that we would ride into rocks or potholes like the rest of the road, but thank god this part of the road was clean.
Then we passed a waterfall that fell right onto our road.
Here is Dave next to the waterfall... just to check that it was real.
An artsy pic of the same waterfall. The sun shone beautifully from behind.
My favourite part of the trip was riding underneath a waterfall that poured right on the road!!
It's pretty wild to see so many different kinds of waterfalls.
Here's another one. Every next one more beautiful than the previous.
