Baños: the city, not the bathroom

This past weekend I went to Baños with a small group of students. It was my first time traveling two weekends in a row, which was a little weird, but after looking through my planner and realizing how little time I actually have left, I decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. We took the trole (a form of public transportation in the city) all the way to the south stop. The ride was about an hour, but it was cool to ride through parts of the city I haven’t seen. From there we had a pretty easy 3-hour bus ride to the south. We arrived and made it to our hostel (everything in Baños is walking distance), where we met the extremely friendly owners and settled into our rooms. It had started raining, so we decided to go grab some lunch at a little Mexican place. By the time we were done, it was sunny again!

For the worriers, let me preface what I’m about to say with this: I did not partake in the activity I’m about to explain. There’s this thing here in Ecuador called “puenting” (puente means bridge), which is kind of like bunging jumping, but with a non-stretchy rope. Basically you dive off the side of a bridge in a body harness until the rope is taut and then you swing underneath it. A few of my friends decided they wanted to do it, so we headed to the bridge after lunch. To no avail, they tried their hardest to get us party poopers to participate. Despite the fact that they swore to me that your stomach doesn’t drop (the feeling I hate so much and the reason I don’t ride roller coasters), I decided to stand my ground. We explored the town for a while, which was fun. It’s really touristy, but there are lots of cute markets with this well-known candy called melcocha, which is basically like taffy.

Around 6:30 we decided to head over for an evening dip in the hot springs.Unknowingly we first tried to get into what turned out to be their hottest pool: a stifling 138 degrees. Needless to say, we couldn’t dip our feet in for more than 3 seconds, so we headed up the medium temperature pool, which was just right. We hung out there for a while, then decided to give the hotter pool another try. It was much easier the second time, but we decided to get out after about 5 minutes of sweating profusely. We headed back to our hostel and whipped up (or rather Philip whipped up) some delicious pancakes involving berries, bananas, chocolate, etc. (Side note: it’s incredible that you can pay $6 a night to stay in such a friendly environment with clean rooms, hot water, and a kitchen available for use). That night we hung out for a while, checked out the nightlife, and went to bed in preparation for our big plans the next day.

On Saturday we got up and made some eggs and each rented a bike from the hostel for $5. We set out on “La Ruta de las Cascadas” (Highway of the Waterfalls). It’s the road that leads to the jungle, and we had been told it’s a must-do activity in Baños. The entire route is 61km, but most people only go the 18km to the Pailón del Diablo waterfall, which is what we did. This section of the route is mostly downhill and you pass about four other waterfalls. We hiked down to one of them, which was pretty cool. You have to hike to the last waterfall as well, and then you can pay $1 to climb through a rocky tunnel and go behind the waterfall. We got totally soaked, but it was really cool. Luckily since we were already wet we didn’t mind as much when it started pouring on the hike back. We stopped for lunch then headed back to Baños on a “chiva” (the main transportation for those returning with their bikes). I’m still not quite sure how the guy managed to strap so many bikes on successfully. The ride was pretty easy, but my butt is still recovering. (Maybe we should have saved the hot springs for that night?)

Once we got back, we cleaned up and rested for a bit. Then we headed out to climb the 600 hundred stairs (plus some dirt paths that aren’t included in that count) up to the altar on the mountain. We were also climbing in flip-flops, since all of our sneakers got soaked at the waterfalls. We made it to the top in time to watch the sunset (which had been our plan), then we climbed back down and headed to a nice Italian place to celebrate Philip’s birthday (a student on the program). The owner was really friendly, told us that his restaurant was our home, and gave Philip a free piece of chocolate cake! We rushed back to the hostel in time to catch the 9pm bus tour up the mountain, where you can sometimes see the glowing lava of the volcano Tungurahua if you’re lucky. We didn’t see anything, unfortunately, but there was a cool performance with some guys juggling fire. We headed back into town, where we attempted to find a place with a decent selection of karaoke in English. It didn’t quite work out, but we’re planning to go in Quito at some point. (Speaking of singing, another student and I are trying to start an a cappella group because we miss it terribly – more details to come).

The next morning we were planning to leave around 10, but decided it would be nice to stop for breakfast first. We all wanted the same thing, so trying to make things easier one girl said “tres tradicionales,” which comes with eggs, bread, juice, and coffee/tea/hot chocolate. We proceeded to tell her which hot drinks we each wanted and what kind of juice. Our juice arrived and tasted very strange, so we asked if we could get a different kind. After a very long time, we realized that everyone else who had come in after us had been served. We weren’t sure if she was mad about the juice and giving us poor service on purpose, but we finally asked about our food. Turns out she had missed that order altogether. So not only did we wait forever, but then she proceeded to charge us for the juice separately, even though we thought we had ordered it as part of the meal. Overall it was an interesting experience; our Spanish is pretty decent, so it was a little weird that there had been such a miscommunication. Anyway, the food was good and we hopped on the bus with full stomachs. The trip was easy and we were home by late afternoon!

Other news: I think I might be finally heading to Loja with my family on Friday morning. It’s not completely finalized, but looks promising.