| Oct 30, 2005 - Baños, Ecuador
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 | | show all 29 | | View left from my hostal window | | View right from my hostal window | | Main waterfall in town, hot baths below left | | |
| Baños, a small touristy town, 45 minutes east of Ambato, which is on the main Quito-Cuenca road, about 3 hours south of Quito and 7 hours north of Cuenca.
And man, it is touristy for a reason. Not just international travellers, but hordes of Ecaudorians as well flock to this small locale every weekend to bask in the slightly more tropical climate, and admire the 360-degree mountain view that completely engulfs and dwarfs the town center. Small shops, cafes, restautants. and bars are scattered on every street with outdoor or open-air seating. You can enjoy the locally made taffy (....) which you watch being made and maintained by men repeatedly slapping a large wad of it over a wooden peg in a shop's doorway, stretching the two ends a good 3-4 feet, and whipping this length of taffy back over the peg to start over again. 25 cents gets you a chunk too sweet to finish, and too large for your jaws to handle. There are also pools and a thermal bath (where the town got its name), which is actually just a super-heated pool with water from a nearby waterfall, the main one and only visible one from town.
Saturday afternoon I rented a bike and did the "Avenue of the Waterfalls" ride. The ride takes a couple hours including stops, but is mostly downhill, and leads you along a major road weaving in out and around the curves of the mountainsides, which were sculpted by a river located at a plunge of some hundreds of feet down on your right. Along the way are small pull-offs and lookouts where thundering waterfalls (about 5 in total) more than happily display exactly how far one would travel were their bike or car to lose focus for more than an instant.
The ride ends at the Pailón del Diablo, a small stretch of the river containing two successive waterfalls with a dramatic change in altitude. You park your bike up on the main road, and then walk down along the first waterfall, the little pool in between, and to the top of the second. For an extra dollar you get harnessed up and descend a metal ladder to get an upclose view of the second and more powerful waterfall from about halfway down its descent. When you look up from this point, they say there is a face in the rocks like the one at Ingapirca, though I don't think it is as good. You then head back up to the main road, where I stopped for some lunch. From here local vans and trucks take you and your bike back to Baños for a small fee.
On the way home I changed buses in Riobamba, where clear skies afforded me great views of Chimborazo, one of Ecuador's two tallest and most popular volcanoes. All in all, it was a fabulous weekend, and well worth the 8+ hours of travel I put in on both Friday and Sunday. |
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