Baños (July 24-26, 2006)

You know you’ve been travelling in buses too much when a seven hour bus ride doesn’t seem very long. The trip from Cuenca to Ambato was uneventful; we passed through beautiful countryside and small villages and arrived in Ambato approximately 6.5 hours later. We then had to catch a bus to Baños, another 45 minutes away. I was hoping to find a bathroom before the next bus came along but our usual luck prevailed and a Baños bus came along just as I was hunting for the toilet paper in my bag. The bus ride to Baños was beautiful, with the road running along the valley with the river to our left. We were on the lookout for signs of the erupting volcano, Tungurahua, but it was too cloudy to see the peaks of the mountains.

We arrived in Baños around 5pm and got a cheap room at Hospedaje Santa Cruz and ate dinner across the street at Cafe Good. Deb had a bit of diarrhea so we had to go back to the room after dinner and stayed there for the rest of the night.

:: July 25 ::

Baños is a small town surrounded by lush green mountains and host to several outdoor activities like hiking, mountain biking, rafting, and of course the hot springs that are its namesake (“baños” means “baths” in Spanish). Today was a relaxing day walking around the town and getting got caught up on our emails and photos on the website. In the afternoon we went up to the lookout to watch the volcano erupting. Tungurahua has been erupting continuously since 1999, with occasional flare-ups that are worse than normal. The most recent flare-up started a couple of weeks ago and several communities have been evacuated from the direction of the lava flow and some villages have already destroyed permanently. Most of the time it is possible to climb up at least part of the mountain to see the top, but at this time the entire mountain is closed and the road leading up to it is closed and guarded by military. The flow of the lava is going down the mountain on the opposite side from where Baños is, which is fortunate for our lives but unfortunate because we didn’t get to see any lava. From the lookout we could see humungous blasts of smoke and ash though, shooting about 10km into the air, every five to ten minutes. It was very cool to watch. The wind was blowing in the opposite direction so no ash was falling on Baños, but if we listened very closely we could hear the eruption. The hostels gave evacuation instructions to all the tourists, just in case.

:: July 26 ::

Today we rented bicycles to go and visit the Pailon del Diablo waterfall, approximately 20km outside of Baños. The ride was downhill most of the way, mostly on the main road but it also had some side-trips on dirt roads that went around tunnels. We did ride through one tunnel though, which was fun. All along the ride we could see beautiful waterfalls across the valley and great views of the river. We passed a couple of cable cars that gave trips across the river and back but opted not to do them, since we had done a similar one in Peru on the Salkantay trek.

It didn’t take us very long to reach the Pailon del Diablo waterfall, where a restaurant allows people to lock up their bikes while they walk to the waterfall, hoping for some business on their return of course. The walk to the waterfall went through lovely lush rainforest and ended at the spectacular waterfall, which dumps huge amounts of water into the canyon below. Viewing platforms have been built very close to the waterfall so you can feel the power of the water pounding down, and get wet from the spray as well. A bridge a bit further down the canyon gives good views of the waterfall as well. Back at the restaurant we bought some drinks and ate the lunch that we had brought with us. We had originally thought of continuing down the road to Puyo, but it was already 2pm and Puyo was another 40km away so we threw our bikes on top of a bus and caught a ride back to Baños. We biked around the town a bit more and went to another lookout further up the road to look at the volcano again, but there were more clouds today so we couldn’t see it very well.

Tonight we went for dinner at Restaurant Quilombo, which is close to the hot springs and was recommended by somebody on the Internet as being the best restaurant in town. It certainly didn’t disappoint and the food was delicious and a mix of Argentinian and Ecuadorian food.