The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

The water from the waterfall into the town is considered sacred and people believe it has healing powers. Some people just sprinkle it on themselves, others pour it into wounds or drink it.

To keep up with demand on weekends and holidays, they have built a system that catches some of the water from the waterfall and routes it into these taps so that you can fill bottles to take home.

It wasn’t that busy the evening that Kerri visited, so most people were filling from the waterfall directly.

This is probably the better option, because some of the water that goes into the taps flows across the sidewalk on its way.

Which helpfully cleaned off the shoes I’d been wearing hiking across cow pie covered fields all day.

Of course many of those fields are upstream from this waterfall anyway. Yum.

This was located next to our hotel and caused much confusion. By the road there was a large sign reading “Dinos Park”, and on the hill you could clearly see a couple of plastic dinosaurs, a large cross, an airplane and a volcano sticking out of the trees.

This was all above a large swimming pool and gym complex. Kerri went inside to ask in broken Spanish what Dinos Park was and got a free tour. It was an outdoor path leading past a bunch of chicken and miscellaneous bird cages (Dinosaur descendants? Or just where the owner happens to keep hens for fresh eggs?), to some large, not very realistic model dinosaurs.

I never got any explanation for the cross, the airplane, or the volcano. Actually I can’t say I understand Dino Park any better after visiting. And I’m not sure speaking Spanish would help.

Today we hiked down the other side of the canyon, along a path that used to be used to smuggle contraband sugarcane alcohol out of Banos.

It was supposed to be a nice scenic walk past more waterfalls.

It turned out to be a harrowing journey past lots of waterfalls.

We were terrorized by snakes.

Crossed treacherous bridges.

Entrapped by spider webs (this is hard to take a picture of so here are some pretty flowers instead).

Stared down by creepy cows, both at a distance and about 2 feet away as we had to walk past them on the path.

Trudged through mud and cow pies.

The views were quite nice and could distract us from some of the more stressful events.

This is looking back towards where we started. However by now you couldn’t see the dam anymore. 

Picked up a hitchhiker.

Threatened by flowers.

Swarmed by butterfies

Stampeded by horses.

I think we mentioned there were nice flowers along the path.

Occasional pictures of Matt were taken to keep spirits high.

Oh and more swarms of butterflies were encountered.

Here we are even further away from the dam.

Here Kerri is looking less sure about our future trail path, would we ever escape?

Blockaded by cows.

Balanced over gorges.

Revelled in the weak breeze as we made it to a break in the trees.

Followed an imaginary trail.

Confused by signage.

Climbed halfway up a mountain.

Chased back down by an old man.

Jumped over barbed wire.

Confused by threatening looking flowers.

Mocked by Inca Jay birds.

They were actually quite cool with the different colours.

We finally made it to the end of the trail, but at the end we were trapped on the wrong side.

So a terrifying gondola ride back was required to get back across the river.

We stopped for a snack at a cafe on the mountain over the town.

There was a very good view of the town.

Kerri checked it out upside down.

It was very romantic.