Demo's & Volcanos

Our last night in Cuenca and it coincided with the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, so the local communist party had a demonstration calling for the same style of Government for South America (as far as I could make out) It was good natured and the Police kept a distance, music, flags and chanting, all good stuff.
Yesterday we rode the excellent road from Cuenca to Banos, with the exception of having to negotiate the busy city of Riobamba it was a great ride. The usual up , down and around huge mountains, in and out of the clouds, fantastic! We took the back road to Banos to save mileage , it was fine until about 15 miles from Banos then it was obvious landslides had destroyed the original road and then we were back on a track gouged out of the mountain, Fiona remarked it was a Ripio refresher course! We stopped at the worst bit to take a Photo, Fi was getting the camera out when I heard a rumbling noise, like a truck bouncing along the road or maybe thunder, I looked up and saw a Volcano next to us throwing out a huge plume, the noise got louder and to be honest with the condition of the road and with us not knowing what was happening we got to hell out of there to a better part of the road before we got the pictures. An exciting end to the day! In town we met up With Radick & Maria we last saw in Ushuaia and Mel who we caught up with in Cusco. We are all heading to Columbia and are keeping updated on the chaos there at the moment with strikers blocking roads, no petrol and guerilla activity on the rise apparently. Hopefully things will calm down in the next few days!

Political Demo, good natured, good music!

 The not to bad section of the road, the dust on the right is from falling stones

 Not the worst part but you get the idea

 Watching this remids you that nature is in charge

    Mr Angry Volcano