Colour therapy

So, what was going to be a few days in Baños turned into a week of relaxing and merry-making. We followed our fantastic waterfall escapade with a tour of the local drinking establishments. And I´m not sure if Sue mentioned the fabulous yellow poncho she purchased following our drenching in La Pailon del Diablo cascada, but it was beeeaautiful and has now become our source of happiness on off-days. Sue might need it now because she has yucky flu. It may be the result of our visit to the local drinking establishments, but it might just be one of those things. So we´re holing up in Cuenca for a couple of days. Anyways, I digress. The other form of colour therapy we indulged in involved several cocktails of all the colours of the rainbow, yellow piña coladas, green mai tais and red strawberry somethings, mixed by the expert hands of Susanna, our favourite bar keep. We took our friend Marg out for her last night in Baños, supposedly for one drink, which turned into several, which resulted in Marg not actually leaving the next day. So we all went to Cuenca together the day after. And the night after our first trip bender, Sue hiked up to the Statue of the Virgen to pay her respects (or penance) at 8am after which we headed to the local thermal baths to sweat out the toxins. A soak in the ultra hot baths, followed by a dousing under the icy cold waterfall, followed by subsequent dips in the hot and cold water was just the ticket. No hangover! Amazing! Either that or Sue´s trip to see La Madre worked a treat. Baños was lovely all in all. We stayed in a fantastic hostel (Timara), owned by a lovely ex-pat Brit called Paul who is about the most helpful and kind hostel owner I think we´ll ever meet. We didn´t want to leave but as Marg put it, it´s not really travelling if you don´t go anywhere. Although we seem to have adventures plenty even when we stay in one place. Oh, I also went to a spa for the afternoon and paid to be shut in a steam box and periodically doused in icy cold water by a lovely lady called Estella. After the steaming I had a massage from another lovely lady who was a bit older and farted quite a lot during the session, but perhaps it was all part of the service!