There are lot of really nice cheap places to stay and eat plus plenty of activities based out of Banos, so it's worth planning on staying a few days.
After the vigourour walk up to the lookout we decided to give our knees a rest. We hired bicycles and took to the road that snakes through the valley alongside the river from Banos to Puyo. There are series of beautiful cascades to visit along the way. It is mainly downhill from Banos and we took it slowly so we could take in the scenery. Usually the bike track is along the main road but goes on dirt trackes around the edge of the mountain rather than through the tunnels - with one long dark and very scary exception.
We stopped at several of the cascades, watched some bungee jumping from a road bridge and ended our trip at the most beautiful of which was "El Pailon del Diablo" (or something like that - which from memory translates to something like the devils pot ?). You park your bikes and walk down a moderately steep pathway to a lookout for the waterfall. We were a bit surpised by being hit for an entrance fee shortly before the falls, but we paid up and were very impressed by the view. We were particularly surprised and impressed by the strength and pressure of the water flow. The gentle mist created by it was very pleasant and fresh on the skin.
Further on there was a small hanging bridge that would hold only 5 people at a time crossing to a small restaurant - the main reason to cross it was to get some more photo's of the fall from the otherside.
After a beautiful morning it started to rain quite heavily as we sat at a kiosk eating an ice cream, so we decided to take a truck back. This was quite common thing to do and the truck was very crowded with young travellers telling the "party" and "adventure" stories of their trips. We reflected that on previous trips "way back when", we would have joined in the story telling and become thier newest best friends - but now it all just seemed like hard work and we sat shivering in the back of the truck, enjoying the scenery.
We had a quiet vegetarian dinner at Cafe Good in Banos- where we were the only customers.
