12th - 15th June - Cuenca & Baños, Ecuador

Left Mancora for our 8 hour bus trip to Cuenca, including the boarder crossing into Ecuador. We were told this was one of the worst crossings in South America so we had braced ourselves. We had a private mini bus that was supposed to drop us off at the boarder and we were to walk about 200m through a very busy street to the Ecuadorian bus stop to pick up a local bus to take us to Cuenca. We were very lucky though as the mini bus driver and a few locals on the street convinced the police officer to let us though in the bus, which took us right to the bus station. The troubles started here though. We had 1 minute for 9 of us to use the toilets and Catriona being last had to run to make the bus as it had started to leave without her. The next 5 hours were the trip from hell. The driver thought he was in a rally car and as such we had the most &%%$*** (terrible) bus ride of our lives. At one stage David jumped up and asked our tour leader if he could get off the bus and make his own way! As you can see we did make it to Cuenca unlike the 5 British girls who died in a bus accident in Ecuador in April.

When we arrived we were very shaky and not feeling the best. We settled into our rooms and then headed out for dinner. We arrived during happy hour so that made us feel a little better after Catriona had a pina colada and David had a local beer.

13th Spent the day relaxing, trying to get over yesterdays bus journey. We had a wander around the town. Checked out the Cathedral where there were a group of people praying and singing while the host was on display. The stained glass windows were beautiful and the alter was another big gold display.
14th We were dreading the bus journey today. We had a 6.40am departure from our hotel so we were up at 5.45am. We had to catch 2 buses today, the first one was a 7 hour journey and the second only 1 hour. We were very surprised to find that this bus driver did not think he was a rally car driver, nor a formula 1 driver. We had a good trip up until lunch time, after that we found that a few people had been sick on the bus and Laura and Maren had vomit all over their bags. Also after lunch the driver drove much faster, but nothing like our previous driver. We arrived in Banos at around 4pm. We had a little walk around the town then met back at the hotel to plan our activities for the next day. We had a choice of 1/2 day rafting, 2 hours horse back riding or 1/2 day canyoning. The reason for only 1/2 day activities was that there were 2 world cup qualifying matches being played in the afternoon and no one wanted to work in the afternoon when there was a futbol/soccer game to watch.

15th 8.30am pickup for our 1/2 day of canyoning. David, Gui, Victoria, Laura and Catriona set off to be fitted out with wet suits, jackets, harnesses and shoes. We set off in a mini van to the start of the trip. The guides helped us on with our gear, and then it started to rain. We took one last shot before heading off on our journey. Unfortunately no one had a waterproof camera so we were not able to take any photos of our adventure.We started the trip by jumping 1.5m into a pool. Then we had to absail down our first waterfall. Surprisingly it was not that bad and David did it well. We then had a swim though the rapidly flowing water and a few more absails. We had to hurry as the rain started much heavier and the guides wanted us out of there before the water got much higher. The last part was supposed to be a 3 meter jump into a pool but we ended up absailing down to make it quicker and safer. We walked back up past a trout farm to a restaurant where we had freshly caught BBQ trout for lunch. We headed back into Banos to watch Paraguay beat Brazil 2-0 ane Ecuador and Argentina have a 1 all draw.