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Published: August 5th 2010
Baby of Baños
Beautiful marble monument overlooking the city...Baños is an easy place to find yourself saying "Really, I've been here for FIVE nights already?" The time flew by staying in this small, mellow, traveller-friendly town surrounded by green Andes mountains. It is apparently on the slope of a volcano, but I never heard a grumble. There is great hiking all around which you can pretty much do without a map. My favorite walk (up umpteen stairs) led to a giant marble statue of a virgin. She had a holy-appearing baby in her lap, but I am unsure if this was Jesus as there seem to be many other special, powerful babies in Ecuador, too. You could get up close and personal with the statue by crossing over what essentially amounted to a makeshift bridge made of large twigs. It was too good to resist, so approach the virgin we did.... Then we hiked on to a really cool little hostel that served tasty treats with an amazing view. Portabello mushroom sandwich in Ecuador? My lucky day!
Baños was also the starting point for our epic 60+ km bikeride to the jungle town of Puyo. It is advertised as "mostly downhill" which may be better described as "partially
La Virgen del Agua Santa
A steep, pretty hike up ramshackle stairs. downhill, with large uphills." But it was a great adventure. A group from my hostel rented bikes and off we went... The first part of the road was pretty touristy as it passes over ten waterfalls. Colorfully painted buses filled with Ecuatorian tourists were passing us right and left- an interesting chance to watch how the people here vacation. The cars were very careful with us, but we had more than one orange peel aimed at us from a laughing kid... Our crew stopped at the larger falls which had cable cars you could ride to get a closer look. This one-dollar endeavor was too good to pass up, so we found ourselves in a metal cage powered by what looked like a man driving an automatic car engine high above us. Super fun.
From there, one of the Aussies in the group and I became determined to reach the jungle before nightfall. So ride, we did. It was a great way to see the change of landscape from lush, green mountains to flat, humid jungle terrain. We saw convergences of rivers and the dissapearance of the Andean peaks. Since the natural scenery was so beautirul, I think I
was expecting some sort of utopian town in our jungle-town destination of Puyo. Really it was just a crowded, dusty place with not much to see. We found some ceviche and beer to celebrate our accomplishment. After we regained sensation, we set out to find the bus back to Baños- a mild adventure in itself. After getting about seven different versions of directions, we cruised up to the terminal to find that the next bus was allegedly not for another 2 hours. This was close to a stab in the tired heart, but luckily my bike partner kept me upbeat with his uber-adventurous spirit and extreme optimism. Which is how we ended up begging a bus porter in spanglish to squeeze our bikes underneath and allow us to stand for the 2 hour bus ride back up into the Andes. Sort of painful and very hot. At least they were playing bachata music instead of top-volume Jaun Claude Van Dam movies- it definitely could have been worse. (Note to those considering riding into Puyo- buy your return bus ticket first, THEN grab your celebratory Pilsener.) In summary, an amazing day...
Overall, Baños was a great place to catch a
vacation-vibe and meet interesting travelers. I stayed in a cute little hostel (Santa Cruz) that had a great nighttime fireplace and comfy daytime hammocks. There I met an eclectic, adventurous group of folks from Australia, Germany, Great Britian, Idaho and California. We had a big last night out at the Leprauchan Bar where we commandeered the DJ and boogied down to Outkast and various other interesting Ecuatorian re-mixes of common English songs until the madrugada. It was the next day that I realized I no longer needed a map to navigate the town and had done two full loads of laundry there- a sign that its time to see new sights. So I caught a bus north to Latacunga which is the starting point for treks into the surrounding volcano-filled country. More on that later...
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Yaya
non-member comment
Jen, your pictures are wonderful and I feel like I've been to South America! Continue to create memories!