Banos Delights!

If you hadn't guessed from the name, there is a certain German theme to this well established Banos restaurant, although if you managed to walk in without noticing the name I very much doubt you would guess. It doesn't really look much like your traditional German restaurants found in cities such as Berlin or Munich. Don't see this as a deterrent though as German or not German, food and atmosphere is what makes a restaurant.

Situated on one of the busiest and most popular thoroughfares of Banos and also doubling as a rather swanky hotel, La Casa Vieja de Düsseldorf offers a very impressive array of foods throughout the day, strangely non of which are German though, and are served in a very cosy setting complete with chequered table cloth covered wooden tables and benches opening onto the breezy street through large wooden windows. There is more of a French feel here than German. If picking a table next to the window not only can you view the huge variety of international tourists walking by, but located opposite is the municipal market where the distorted faces of many a cooked guinea pig stare back at you. You will probably be glad with your choice of restaurant when seeing this!

Non of the dishes here are fancy, just your run of the mill pasta, hamburger, soup and sandwich options, but they really are tasty. Due to the restaurant only seating approximately 30 people this also means service is fast with a wait of no more than 15 minutes between ordering your food and tucking into your first mouthful.

Although offering the same bread, egg, and hot drink breakfasts as most other restaurants in Banos, you can order anything offer the menu at any time, even at 7am in the morning. If they don't have the ingredients at hand, for example chicken for my chicken sandwich ($3 and completed with a large portion of fries), a quick run across the road to the market will have your meal back on track in no time. I would say the pastas are my favourite dishes here, and at $3.50-$4.50 each, prices are very reasonable. They also have a vegetarian lasagna on offer, which is delicious, even if my taste buds were slightly impaired after a rather hectic three hour bus journey to get here.

Hot and cold drinks are around the $1 mark including an array of freshly squeezed fruit juices, which are a perfect accompaniment to a meal, if a little on the sweet side. This means a good quality sit down meal in pleasant, well furnished and decorated surroundings isn't going to set you back much more than $5, unless of course you get tempted by the deserts. There is even TV entertainment as well, which seems to be permanently tuned into football, not that I’m complaining. La Casa Vieja de Düsseldorf is open from 7.30am to 11pm. A variety of alcoholic beverages including beer, wines, and spirits can also be ordered here.

The town of Banos, nestled on the slopes of the ever-active Tungurahua Volcano is a favourite stop off destinations for virtually every Gringo visiting this small Andean country. With such a high influx of visitors it isn’t surprising that the town boasts a wide selection of eateries serving anything from French fondue to Japanese sushi.

While the choice of restaurants can’t fail to impress, the lack of originality in choosing their names can certainly cause some head scratching and confusion. In the space of a gentle two minute stroll you not only find Casa Hood, but also the similar sounding Café Hood and Casa Good. In my opinion Casa Hood is the only one worth contemplating.

Casa Hood was founded in Banos approximately 15 years ago by an American ex-pat who certainly knows how to make a place feel like home. As soon as you walk through the door, the candlelit tables and chill out music helps to create a gentle, ambient atmosphere. The surrounding shelves of books and games, which can be used by all, makes you feel you have accidentally wondered into someone’s living room rather than a restaurant.

With seating for no more than 20-30 people, the chaotic scenes of other establishments are kept to a minimum. The book filled shelves though must have people thinking subconsciously about libraries as the noise never rose above a loud whisper on my visit.

A good atmosphere and well-mannered clientele are both positive selling points but it’s the food itself that draws the biggest plaudits. This is something Case Hood serves up in an exotic array of dishes for all tastes, including Mexican, Asian, Italian, Indian, and of course the always popular American staples; steak and hamburger. I would highly recommend the chick pea curry and garlic fried aubergine in breadcrumbs as main courses, both of which come with a choice of sides and in ample servings. I’m not a vegetarian, but with the excellent selection of vegetarian dishes on offer, I was more than happy to eat meat free for a change.

Dishes average around $5-$8 each and with a number of mouth-watering starters (the pita bread and hummus is divine!) and desserts as well, you feel almost rude with not going the full slog of three courses. I wasn’t planning on being so greedy but once the homemade chocolate brownies were spotted, there was no going back! There are your normal selection of alcoholic (including wines) and non alcoholic beverages, although it is the fresh milkshakes, smoothies and juices that would get my vote every time.

Casa Hood is located on the quiet Luis A. Martinez, a stones throw away from the Santa Maria supermarket and also the more vociferous bars and clubs. Books can be swapped here with any on the shelves. Movies are also shown most nights around 8pm. It can get busy, especially at weekends, so be prepared to wait for a table. More information can be found by contacting Casa Hood on 593-9-4620269.

Opposite San Martin Zoo, a short 10-minute ride from central Baños, is Acuario y Serpentario San Martin. If you are visiting the zoo and feel the need to add reptiles, snakes, and a few more birds to your day's viewing, then the $1 entrance fee and 30 minutes it takes to look around the various enclosures doesn't really cut deep into your time or monetary budgets. On the other hand, a trip out of Baños specifically for this one attraction isn't really worth it.

Although housing a decent representation of reptiles, snakes, spiders, and fish from the coastal and eastern rainforests, including the much-feared and highly poisonous fer-de-lance, I felt a little embarrassed that I had paid to see so many creatures in minute cages that failed to allow freedom of movement. One turtle was a good two-thirds the size of his tank, making turning around a near impossibility. The alligators (or crocodiles, I can never remember!) were also crowded into a small enclosure with a good number of their turtle colleagues. In fact there were so many animals in the same one cage that some of the alligators and turtles were living on top of each other. There was no other room available. It always makes me feel guilty when I feel my money is helping keep animals in distressingly poor living conditions.

On the bright side though, many of the spiders and snakes on show had more than an adequate living space, although I envisage some of the snakes in a few years time will have out grown their tanks and will need larger living quarters. If there is a staff member around (they seem to be a very rare species indeed), they will happily allow the pet boa constrictor to come out of his cage for a free photo opportunity. I sadly turned this opportunity down, due to not being the macho guy I want people to think I am!

At the back of Acuario y Serpentario San Martin is a small collection of bird species, including a number of flamingos. Although the collection is nothing to write home about, it does make a refreshing change from the cramped conditions of the other creatures here. Children will also no doubt be very impressed by the vast array of colours on offer from the variety of birdlife.

Thirty minutes is about all you need to see everything on offer, and if you feel a little peckish afterwards then there are a number of small restaurants and street vendors outside. If you do feel the desire to visit here, or the zoo located directly opposite on the other side of the road, then a taxi from central Baños will set you back around $3. Local buses to San Martin also run from central Baños every 20 to 30 minutes and cost a fraction of a taxi, around $0.25. I would only visit here if visiting the zoo as well.

On the outskirts of Baños in the district of San Martin and touted as one of the spa town's premier attractions is Zoologico San Martin. I'm sure in Ecuador and over South America such a zoo for educational purposes is of great benefit to the children. From a tourist's perspective though, my visit here was a little on the disappointing side.

The zoo itself contains many varieties of monkeys, birds, and other mammals from the varying climates of Ecuador. All the animals seem to be more than happy with their spacious and well-designed enclosures and showed no signs of boredom or depression. Each enclosure gives good, detailed information on the animals in both English and Spanish, which was very useful as my Spanish skills are somewhat lacking.

Although I was actually very impressed with the effort that had gone into the enclosures, sadly, staffing was not as high quality. On my trip, a group of schoolchildren were able to happily let themselves into the Galapagos Turtles' enclosure and take a good variety of pictures with the hapless creatures, including numerous ones of people sitting on them. I also had the pleasure of witnessing a couple of spectacled bears chase after their cage cleaner, who initially was easily able to scare them off with a few buckets of water. Once his water had run out, I honestly thought it was touch or go whether he would escape alive. It certainly made for great car crash TV.

Of the animals on show, I would say the condors were the highlight. Their enclosure allowed them a good space for flying, and they showed no signs of intimidation from the watching visitors as they snuggled right against the fence of the viewing area, so close you could touch them if you wanted. Such large enclosures I don't think are found in some of the most respected American zoos, such as Cincinnati. In one bird enclosure there is a parrot on show that seemed to enjoy showing off by speaking Spanish to the passing people. Very amusing indeed.

The zoo is a little on the small side, which makes it perfect for a half-day trip out of Baños. The only problems I can envisage are for disabled or out of shape people. As the zoo is built on the side of a mountainous (ish!) hill, you are continuously either going up or down the numerous steps. Where there aren't steps, the paths seemed to be carved out of the naturally occurring rock of the area, which can get mightily slippery in wet weather.

Entrance is $1.50 for adults and there is a small gift shop selling reasonably priced souvenirs. The zoo can be reached either by taxi (approximately $3) or by local buses that pass through central Baños on the way to San Martin, driving over a death-defying, rickety bridge in the process. The zoo is open from 8am to 5pm and more information can be found at www.sanmartinzoo.org.

Banos is a city full of enjoyments and pleasure and it's almost impossible not to leave feeling calm and relaxed. Unfortunately a night excursion to the slopes of Tungurahua Volcano is something completely out of character to the rest of the town, in fact as another tourist put it, ‘it’s as enjoyable as sticking a needle in your own eye'.

Almost every road you walk down in Banos someone is offering night time trips to the still very active Tungurahua volcano, where they guarantee glimpses of red molten lava exploding from the crater top. I had never seen an erupting volcano before, actually I lie, from my home just outside Latacunga in the Ecuadorian Sierra I can often see clouds of ash billowing from this very same volcano, but this just isn't the same as genuine red molten lava. Sensing an awe-inspiring experience and numerous photo opportunities, especially after seeing some of the rather dazzling photos the tour tout had to offer, I handed over my $3 for a night time adventure to an observatory point close to the summit.

For the next few hours, until we met at our designated meeting point outside Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Rosario de Agua Santa at 9pm I was quietly anticipating what I hoped to be an eventful evening. Sadly upon getting into the colourful wooden seats on the back of a converted Bedford lorry and making the 20-30 minute trip to the observation point everything started to go downhill.

Basically, the chances of seeing the top of the volcano through the obscuring clouds, let alone choosing a day when the volcano decides to spurt a little molten lava from it's summit is probably as likely as Steve Buscemi being voted most handsome man in all of America. This was something they forgot to mention when handing over the $3.

To make up for this disappointment I decided to partake in the consumption of alcohol instead to ease the pain, another lucrative money-spinning venture of the tour operators, as those that were most disappointed tended to buy their fair share of beer and therefore offload a nice amount of ‘dinero’ into the pockets of our guides. An hour later fellow group members were well and truly hammered and had built a small bonfire to keep themselves warm. These were the only flashes of red and orange that we had the pleasure of seeing that night.

By the time I arrived back into Banos at 11.30pm, like the rest of my fellow paying tourists, we felt we had been short changed and seeing this was the only night I was spending in Banos I knew that doing absolutely anything else would have been far more interesting. Therefore from my experience I won't be recommending this excursion to anyone in the near future.