My first weekend was exceptional. Baños was easily my favorite destination in Ecuador. For a town so small there were plenty of interesting things to do and fill up a weekend.
The bus took about four hours to get to Baños and it was dark when we arrived. When we got there this young dude actually stepped onto our bus and tried to get us to stay at his hostel for $7 a night by telling us it had free wifi. Many of us were not about to stay at some place that was so desperate for customers so we had the bus continue on attempting to find the hostel, Llanovientos, which came recommended by Rosita our program director in Quito. We eventually found it (Baños is not a large town) and crashed for the night. Llanovientos was a good choice. For a very reasonable price ($9 a person) we were able to get rooms of two beds a piece along with towels, breakfast, and wifi all included.
On Saturday morning we had the hostel call up a travel agent. The agent offered us day activity options which included biking the waterfall trails, rafting, or canyoning (rappelling down waterfalls). I have never been canyoning before, but it just didn’t seem as appealing to me as rafting. The majority of the group decided to go canyoning and then biking, but Megan, Chuck, and I decided to go rafting. I didn’t regret my decision at all, in fact I’m glad we chose rafting because we had an awesome time! It took about an hour to drive to the river where we set off on the rafts and probably a little longer on the way back. The rafting lasted two hours and our guide even flipped us twice. There were six of us in my raft; our guide, the three of us CFHI students, some chick from China, and an Ecuadorian school teacher. There were two other rafts filled with Ecuadorian high school girls. The professor apparently taught at an all girls catholic school. Anyway, I think some the girls didn’t know how to swim, so our boat was the only boat which received the ‘EXTREME’ treatment. Even though our raft was flipped twice on purpose, none of us lost the raft entirely. However, I can’t say the same about the other rafts because near the end of the trip a girl fell out and went missing for a while. Our boat was a ways ahead at that point, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but the missing girl was eventually found. It was raining anywhere from a light drizzle to an outright downpour during virtually our entire rafting ride. At times it was difficult to keep my eyes open to see. But I was glad that we were out rafting at this time and not trying to bicycle like other members of our group because rafting will already make you soaked.
All and all I was very impressed by our rafting experience. Our guide was totally at ease on the water and would frequently be talking on his waterproof cell phone (hopefully regarding company business but who am I kidding?) as we floated down the river. After the rafting, we road back to a little house along the way and had lunch which was included with the package. The cost was very economical; only $30 including rafting, lunch AND a CD with pictures and a short video of our rafting experience. Undoubtedly a company in the United States would charge an extra $20 or more just for the pictures. You would think that a strictly touristy town like Baños would charge steep prices, but it is not so. Just another one of the reasons why I loved Baños.
After we got back from rafting the three of us and Julia decided we wanted to take a walk downtown and try out the Baños de Agua Santa (Holy Water Baths) for which the city gets it’s name. ‘Baños’ means ‘baths’ in this case and not ‘bathrooms’. And by ‘baths’ I really mean ‘hotsprings’. Anyway, one can walk the length of the city of Baños in less than 20 minutes so it didn’t take long to get there. We stopped at the local cathedral on our way. The baths are usually open from early in the morning through the afternoon and then close for a couple hours (for cleaning?) and then reopen for another few hours during the evening. The baths were closed at the time we arrived, but a good sized line had formed outside. First we went over to the neat little waterfall situated alongside the baths. From that vantage point we were able to see into the enclosure and we weren’t very impressed. The water did not appear to be very clear at all and the facilities weren’t the cleanest. Then I noticed that the majority of the people in line to enter the ‘pool’ were dark skinned Ecuadorians and not foreign tourists. This was surprising considering that the town was filled with tourists. It was maybe $2 or $3 to go in, but we weren’t even sure we’d go in if it were free. So we didn’t.
Instead we went and got massages which like everything were very cheaply priced at $20 an hour. We only got half hour massages for $10 though which came with a free facial. I’d never had a professional massage before so it was interesting. Definitely came out wishing it were a little longer though.
One thing I bought in Baños as a gift for my parents was Melcocha which is a type of sugar cane taffy. It´s a local specialty which I only had a small sample of. Hopefully, mom and dad will share some with me when they finally open there packages.
Later that same night, everybody went out to check out the Baños night scene. Unlike in Quito, all of the bars and discos are situated around just a couple city blocks. It didn´t take very long to walk from place to place and the smaller atmosphere added to the camaraderie. There was a bar with free karaoke, some nice dance clubs, and even a club with an outdoor bar in the back with a fire pit. But we didn’t stay out super late because Megan, Chuck, Julia, and I had plans to go 4-wheeling the next morning.
Ok that’s a complete lie. Haha. I did stay out late because I’m a professional at going without much sleep. I stayed out ‘til the bars closed at 3am and probably didn’t get to sleep until around 4am, but it didn’t affect me much. I was up raring to go at 9am when the four of us previously mentioned went off to rent ATVs (known as 'cuadronos' in Ecuador). We rented two ATVs each $30 for two hours.
I rode with Julia and Chuck rode with Megan. Now the town of Baños is up in the mountains much like Quito is. There is even an active volcano which can be seen from the town, but it was too cloudy to see during the weekend we were there. Our goal was to take the ATVs to the top of the neighboring peak with the cross which overlooks the town. At night time this cross is lit up with lights and can be seen from anywhere in the town. Anyway, so we set off on the road up the mountain. The road started off paved in asphalt which then turned to cobblestone. Eventually we got to a point in the road where it changed to only dirt and mud (since it had rained rather hard the previous day). We went along the mud road for a ways but we eventually reached a point where we could go no further. We had to turn around dejected since we had not reached our goal.
Chuck and Megan led on the way back and they sped off because they thought we might not make it back in time for our allotted two hours. However, there was a turn off from the road that I wanted to check out, so I told Julia (who was driving at the time) to veer off on a side road we had passed on our way up the hill. I had noticed on our way up that there had been a sign saying “Mirador” (meaning viewpoint), but I had thought it best to stay on our current main road at the time. Yet, on the way down we took the side road and sure enough just a few hundred meters ahead was the large cross and viewpoint we had been looking for. I called Chuck and they turned around and met us there. It was nice to see the view of Baños and as it turned out we still had 10 minutes to spare by the time we had descended the hill again. After returning the ATVs we had a quick lunch and hopped on the bus back to Quito.
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