2003-04-26 - Banos (Ecuador) - Fireball

Glowing orbs in the sky in Banos, Ecuador

I was touring Ecuador with a group (an organised tour). We were in Banos, Ecuador for two nights. On the second night, my room mate (a management consultant) was on the balcony of our hotel whilst I was filling in my journal. It was night time. She banged on the window and called me out, as she couldn't believe what she could see. I went out and was amazed. There were two small balls in the sky. They were reddish/yellow - they kind of looked like balls of lava or something. They could grow and alter their brightness, but remained a sort of red colour all the time. One of them was to the left of me - it seemed to be heading towards the constellation of Orion. The second one was zipping around the sky, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but I have never seen anything move like it before. She said that one of the balls actually came down into the valley and then went back up into the sky (but did not actually land).

There is a mountain across the valley, and from behind it was a flash like sheet lightening. Then another ball rose slowly upwards. It did the same as the second ball, following the exact manouvoures that I watched the second one do. By now, the second ball had moved to the left slightly.

A few minutes later, a fourth ball rose, again, preceded by a flash from the mountain. This did the same as the two balls behind it. The third ball had also moved over to the left. The three glowing balls made a triangle and stayed still in the sky.

At this point I was pretty freaked out so I ran back into my room and across the hall to get some more of our tour group. Two of them came back with me (one works in a laboratory, and the other is a psychologist), and the four of us watched the lights. By now, the first light could not be seen, and balls 2 and 3 were heading over towards Orion. Ball 4 waited in the sky. There was another flash from behind the mountain and then a fifth ball rose upwards. It was bigger than the other ones, and instead of doing any manouvours, it went straight across the valley and appeared to go behind the mountain behind our hotel. The fourth ball then went off into the sky, and could be seen very faintly.

I watched the whole thing for half an hour. We then had to go off for a group meal at a local restaurant. When we came out, the sky had clouded over so I could not see if they were there or not.

I didn't take a photo as there was a streetlight below us and it would have flooded the picture with light. I wish I had a camcorder though!! Even now I don't know what it is we saw. There is no way it could have been a hot air balloon or aeroplanes, nor helicopters. They made no sound at all.