I am not sure that the pictures that we took of this portion of the trip really do it justice. To see the mountain gardens, so steep even a goat couldn’t climb it, (well not really), and they are farming the land. Let’s start at Banos where we spent a leisurely morning visiting the downtown and then a small hike, (very small at this altitude), to get a few pictures of the town. This is a very friendly town and is well known for the very hot and wonderful hot-springs that bubble out of the mountain side. No surprise of course as we are in the valley of volcanoes still and there is one, not to far away, that is very active, like every ten minutes.

After our downtown walk and the short hike we had a quick lunch then on to Riobamba. On the way we stopped at a old train station and met a very strange little man and his daughter. He is known as the “last ice merchant” his name is Baltazar Uscha he is 67 years old and has been getting ice off Mount Chimborazo to sell for 52 years. There is a You Tube documentary about him just google the “the last Ice Merchant”.

The story is amazing, this man and his daughter became quite famous after the documentary and they flew him to New York city for a presentation. Imagine someone who never had been farther than 50 miles from home going to NY City? anyway watch the You Tube!

By the way we were at 12600 ft above sea level at this point, noticeable to me at least.

The volcano, Mount Chimborazo is 20800 ASL, twice as high as Mount Baker! We got some great pictures after we got to Riobamaba because the clouds had finally lifted. On top of that we caught a glimpse of an active volcano erupting; some of our group got some great pictures early on but unfortunately because of timing Berniece and I only caught a steam eruption. Maybe tomorrow..we will try again.