Banos, Ecuador - Day 112-120

It was time for Bella to refresh her Spanish speaking skills and for Kris to finally learn some Spanish. We have been traveling for almost 4 months, and heard Ecuador was a cheap and great place to take Spanish classes, so it was now or never.

After taking a much needed rest day, we packed up and headed 2 hours north to the beautiful small mountain town of Banos, which is known as Ecuador's adventure capitol. We decided to take Spanish classes for one week, and since lessons were only 4 hours of the day, we thought Banos would be an ideal place because of all the hiking, biking, and soaking in hot springs that can be done right from town after school was out.

One of the highlights of taking Spanish lessons was we finally stayed in one place for more than 2 or 3 days and the Spanish school rented out a nice apartment to us in the same building for dirt cheap. It was great to have a space bigger than the usual one-room hostels we've been staying in and we were finally able to cook our own food and not compete for kitchen space in a communal kitchen.

Once again the weather was terrible with mainly overcast skies and rain everyday....we're beginning to think the bad weather is following us. Due to the weather we were cooped up inside and didn't get to explore the surrounding outdoors as much as we wanted to. It was a good thing we had a nice apartment to hang out in and do our Spanish homework.

Maybe Colombia will have sunnier weather...?

The beautiful town of Banos.

The main plaza in Banos with a rare moment of sun.

Home sweet home, at least for a week. Bella is cooking in the cocina.

Because of the bad weather we spent a lot of time in here....good thing we had cable TV with some english channels!

Bella studying on the roof terrace. That may look like sunny skies but shortly after the wind picked up and the clouds took over causing us to go back inside.

This was one of the few hikes we went on. The trails were surprisingly lush and green.

This trail may not look steep but it probably should have a staircase through it.