Banos - Rain - Volcanos

So as the post notes we have arrived in the town of Banos which is shadowed by the looming presence of Vulcan Tungurahua. This volcano is still active and has erupted as recently as 2006 and 2008!

The Volcano rises to 5023 meters however cannot be climbed due to the fact it may go off at any point!

Banos sits at 1800 meters in a small valley surrounded by green mountains, it kind of looks like a swiss ski resort.

Our first day was good weather and we decided to hike up the mountain to the left of the picture, it was a pretty steep climb up to around 2500 meters.

It took about 40 minutes to reach the first viewpoint over the city, this is where the first picture was taken from.

After another 30 minutes of climbing we reached the Cafe Del Cielo the views from here over the city were stunning.

With our friend Lori

After we had an amazing cup of coffee in the cafe and the girls had dreamed about staying at the attached hotel we started the slow descent back to Banos.

About half way down the mountain we heard a siren begin.....the girls were not sure what it was but having read a leaflet at the hostel I was concerned. What we were hearing was the Volcano alert siren !!!!!!

Now from reading the leaflet this siren was supposed to be short blasts for a test....

So I listened....

It was a long blast no breaks........

Hmmmmm that didn't sound good. Slightly anxiously I explained to the girls that it was the volcano siren...However as you can guess eventually it stopped and nothing happened so we guess it was a test???

As per the fact the Cotopaxi summit trip has had to be abandoned, the weather in Ecuador is not being kind to us. For almost every southern town - village or city rain is forecast for the next 10 days!!! We only planned to be in Ecuador for another 10 days so we are considering just moving on to Peru early where the weather seems slightly better.

Anyway all will become clear in the next few days unlike the sky!