Bogota to Banos

We left Colombia two days ago for Ecuador, the scenery on our route has been nothing short of epic. Since then we've been horseback riding at Cotopaxi which I promise to share with you later. Exploring the local nature and climbing hills has been exhausting; now we're at a spa on top of a mountain overlooking Banos awaiting a massage. Since I'm doing this piece by piece let's start with a photo of the Eldorado lounge bar at the Colombian airport-highly recommended by the way.

The flight from Bogota, Colombia to Quito, Ecuador is just under two hours, luckily enough we could see some of the impressive terrain. This trip involves many hotels and took a lot of planning, lucky for us the journey between cities has offered fantastic views. Many Equdorians live between two mountain ranges high on the Andian planes so our heads were constantly turning. Here are a couple photos from the plane.

You can see the depth of the terrain and that Quito's airport is built on a plateau. Quito itself is one of the highest cities in the world at 2850 meters or 9350 feet. We decided to skip the city and head straight into nature. Landing in Quito we took a taxi, made a left at Machachi to a place at the foot of Cotopaxi 😸 Our driver got lost and broke an axle driving along a bumpy rocky road for 60 minutes to the middle of nowhere.

When we arrived at our lodgings a fire was lit and there was no WiFi. Hence the pause in this story, that's okay though, there's more to life than blogging. The next day we awoke to a beautiful site.

The view from our room at 6am was nothing short of impressive. Cotopaxi is one of the highest volcanoes in the world at 5897 meters. It is also very active having erupted 50 times in the past 300 years and as recently as a few years ago. For a volcano near the equator, having snow on its peak is a rarity. We explored it the next day (post later I promise) and continued on our trek to Banos.

Here is Chimborazo behind the city of Ambato. The top of Chimborazo is the tallest point in Ecuador at 6263m or 20549 feet, making its summit the furthest peak from the center of the earth because of the equatorial bulge. We won't be climbing it on this vacation. If you look the other way you can see the Volcano Tungurahua next to Banos de Agua Santa.

Apparently this Volcano is still erupting, there are evacuation signs all over the town and the Banos has been evacuated a few times in the past decade. Tungurahua means throat of fire. Can't wait to check out more of Banos. Thanks for reading and be sure to follow more of our adventures.

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