After our little slice of paradise at Cotapaxi National Park we head back to civilisation to the small town of Banos. The adventure capital of Ecuador, it reminded us very much of Queenstown in New Zealand - you could jump off bridges, zip line across valleys, throw yourself out across the town on a giant swing and much more.
We chose a spot of Canyoning, which at just $30 was fantastic value as we spent 3 hours rappelling down five waterfalls through the Ecuadorian jungle. We tried the local sweet, Melcocha, which is basically just sugar hand stretched on a wooden peg and is totally delicious, if slightly nausea-inducing if you eat more than a mouthful (which of course we did).
From Banos we head to Ecuador's third city, Cuenca. The ride was absolutely wonderful - we ignored our map and GPS and chose a more interesting-looking route, which normally doesn't work out so well but this time it took us up over volcanoes and around the side of mountains, even up above the clouds. It should have been a beautiful, peaceful journey, and it was certainly beautiful but ended up being rather stressful as a result of a snapped pannier support, which kept bending and blocking the suspension.
We had to stop multiple times to try and bend it back and hold it in place with cable ties, but it wouldn't hold. In the end we took the pannier off and strapped it on top of the other, while I held onto it for the remaining hour and a half to Cuenca.
We arrived after 7 hours of riding, very exhausted from all the faffing around, and spent a couple of nights recuperating and of course finding a mechanic to weld the pannier back on. Not wanting any more pannier issues (there have been far too many) we got him to just weld it straight to the bike, so it's no longer detachable which is not ideal, but far preferable to it falling off at the top of a mountain.
From Cuenca it was onto our last stop in Ecuador - Vilcabamba. A tiny town a few hours from the Peruvian border, it is thought to hold the secrets to long life, as its inhabitants have an unusually high life expectancy. As a result it is full of hippie types which made for some fun people watching as we sat down for a late lunch. Set in a lush valley among many mountains it was a lovely place for our last stop in Ecuador.
Looking ahead to Peru we knew we had some pretty epic riding ahead of us! So it was one last rest in Ecuador before we pushed on to country number 11.