Arrived in Banos on May 3rd evening after a long drive.  Banos is a beautiful city surrounded by mountains - and an active volcano!  It reminds me a bit of Banff in it's beauty and vibe.  We explored the town, went back to our room to clean up and then wandered into a lovely restaurant where we feasted on filet mignon and all the fixings for $8.00!  After eating, we ventured out a bit to explore the town at night.  As with most of the places we have visited in Ecuador

, Banos has a vibrant night life where we connected with people from all over the world who, like us, have followed their dreams to Ecuador.   After a bit of socializing we turned in a bit earlier than in the past few nights.

Beautiful Banos came alive early this morning - May 4th - around 3:15am as the volcano erupted, spewing black ash throughout the town.  It actually became active about a month ago, but this was the first time it spewed ash.  I have attached some pics of people sweeping up the ash as well as of us wearing the masks that were handed out to the locals to avoid inhaling the toxic ash.  Kind of cool to be here to witness this, but I'd say we timed our exit just about right!!

We drove three hours after grabbing a great fruit smoothie, to the city of Quito - from where we first began our journey.  We will explore the town a bit more this afternoon/evening and then call it a night a bit early as tomorrow we must say good-bye to beautiful Ecuador and head back home to Canada.   This truly has been one of the most incredible trips of my lifetime!