Day Twenty Eight - Quito to Banos

We woke up this morning and headed up for breakfast where we were greeted by chocolate chip pancakes!!!! I chopped up some banana, had about a litre on maple syrup and far too much pancake! But damn was it good!

We then headed out into Quito to take out some cash for the next few days. Taking cash out in big cities is always nerve wracking because of the amount you have to take out in one go. We smuggled it back into the hostel and got ready to leave. We were heading to Banos today!

At the bus station, we had people yelling and clapping at us saying 'Banos Banos Banos' over and over, but fortunately we'd done a bit of research and knew the best companies! Unfortunately, we'd arrived at 11pm, and were told by the company that the next bus leaving was at 6pm! Fortunately we found another company and managed to get on a bus leaving in 20 minutes.

The bus was fine, I managed to sleep a bit but they were playing really loud music and then afterwards an awful Spanish dubbed Jackie Chan movie! Then a child was sick on the bus and it ran all down the aisle stinking out the whole place!! We arrived in Banos about 20 minutes after this incident thankfully!

It was pretty wet and miserable when we arrived. We walked the 1km to our hostel down some very questionable streets with barking dogs everywhere! The hostel was nice though.

When trying to check in, the lady couldn't find our reservation (despite having two spare beds that were evidently ours!) and proceeded to be incredibly rude and blunt with us. Probably one of the most unhelpful people I've met out here. When we told her we were also booked in the night after in a private, she proceeded to tell us that we couldn't use tomorrow nights reservation tonight... we were exasperated! After much debate, we were shown to our room. It was quite nice, big and roomy with a private bathroom.

Back in the bar, we had a couple of drinks and some dinner. I had this amazing lasagne! There was the tiniest kitten I've ever seen wandering around the room, and meowing at our food! When we'd finished I picked her up, and for the rest of the night she nestled herself into my jumper and slept. I thought I'd truely found love. Turns out that kittens are fickle creatures... I saw her much later on cuddling someone else. Heartbroken.

Back in our room, we had a quick chat with our roomies, who gave us their swimming caps for the baths and had a chat about what they'd done. Another roomie had just returned from hospital with salmonella so I gave her my bottom bunk and me and Brendan took the two top bunks. They were pretty ricotty and I didn't want to move around too much, but I had a fantastic nights sleep!!