Getting wet

It´s a struggle staying here in Baños. How do you decide between hotpools, facials, massages, and about a million outdoor activites? We´re pretty close to the jungle too so you can dart off into the amazon for a few days and swim with the barracudas, have your face painted by tribesmen or whatever takes your fancy.
Our adventure yesterday was slightly more sedate but lots of fun. We ran into a dude called Mario, who hooked up his brother Angel to take us on a jeep ride along the valley running out of Banos towards Puyo. It´s surrounded by volcanoes here, some of them quite active, and the countryside is incredible, lots of deep river canyons and the most amazing waterfalls, especially after quite a few days of rain.
We took our chances on a cable car ride across a ridiculously deep river canyon. After a couple of weeks observing the languid approach to health and safety here you find yourself hesitating and tossing up the odds about doing these sorts of things but a sense of adventure won the day. The ride was very fast and we shared it with half a dozen large planks of wood that were loaded on. This mystified us a little, until a little old lady showed up at the other end of the cable car ride and unloaded them. We helped of course but i think she could have managed it quite nicely herself.
We drove a bit further after this and Angel provided us both with a pair of gumboots and guided us down a very steep walk to the Devil´s palion (the religious overtones of this weren´t lost on us) , a very spectacular waterfall. Meg was then foolish enough to ask whether we could go behind the waterfall which made Angel smile quite excitedly and indicate that indeed yes we could. So we ended up scrambling around some rocks and through a very narrow rock tunnel until we ended up in a little refuge under a thundering wall of water. The waterfall was periodically throwing off huge surges of water so parts of it were a bit like running the gauntlet. We were wearing our little semiwaterproof jackets, while Angel was wearing a big plastic poncho down to his knees. We were wet to the bone - he was fine. He giggled and said the waterfall wasn´t normally anywhere near that big.
Anyway, we discovered afterwards that it´s quite a lot of fun to climb for 20 minutes up a steep track dripping wet with gumboots full of water. We then sat dripping in the restaurant at the top and had the three course menu of the day which cost the grand total of 2.20 NZ each.
Such are the small adventures we are having. Our highlight adventure on the previous day had been a jaunt in a kiddy type ride (with a rhinohead at the front, rock music blaring and a bunch of carts behind). We thought it might be a sedate ride through the town but the driver was a maniac, we lurched from side to side in our little carts while he zig zagged through the streets and took 90 degree turns at the last possible minute. Petrol´s quite cheap here...
Anyway we´re chilling out here for a few more days and then we´re thinking of heading to Cuenca which is 7 0r 8 hours south of Banos.
Enough for now. Hope you are all doing well.

Meg and Sue