The day I was gonna make my way from Latacunga to Baños started with a relaxed breakfast. We were a group of five heading for Baños that day, and we were all equally convinced that direct buses ran quite frequently. It's only a two hour ride so they should be, right? At the bus terminal we were told otherwise. After some confusion were sent of on a bus to Ambato where we were told that we would find a connecting bus. That didn't quite happen. After being told different things by a numerous amount of people and having run all around the terminal, it appeared that there were no buses leaving for Baños anytime soon. Only moments later we were suddenly shoved into a fully booked bus headed for Baños, after paying 0,20 USD for a ticket we didn't really understand. Apparently this is what they do around here when there are no available buses; they charge a small fee for taking people a part of the way, to somewhere where they'll be able to catch local buses to their final destinations. We were therefore soon thrown out on the street, with a promise that a bus to Baños would appear within the next fifteen minutes. Luckily it did. Altogether the trip from Latacunga to Baños took about three hours, which isn't at all that bad, but this still makes for my most interesting bus journey thus far.
When finally in Baños we found a hostel and went off to explore. My number one priority in Baños was to get my picture taken on the swing at the the end of the world, and we decided to get this done sooner rather than later. After discovering that the buses up to the swing stopped running at 4pm we squeezed five people into a taxi, for which we paid 20 USD. This covered a return ride plus the driver waiting for an hour while we swung. I don't know what I expected from Casa del Arbol, but it certainly wasn't what actually met me. After paying 1 USD to enter, we walked into a park with lots of swings and lots and lots of people. I've seen dozens of idyllic pictures taken from Casa del Arbol, and although I wasn't surprised it was still a bit disappointing that the site looks nothing like that in real life. Oh well, I got some cool photos which was kind of the purpose all along.
I'd been wondering where I'd wake up on my 26th birthday, and Baños ended up being the place. Although I don't care much about my birthday, it was still nice having people that I knew to spend the day with. My friends bought me a birthday cake, sang for me and forced me to have a better meal in a restaurant as "you can't only eat fries for your birthday". It was very much appreciated.
For the day we rented bikes and set off on a 20 km ride to the waterfalls in the area. Although the rain was pouring for most of the ride, it was still an enjoyable day. As we were already soaking wet, there were also no reasons not to explore the waterfalls up close. I believe my shoes were wet for a week afterwards. After reaching the end of the trail we decided to pay a truck to take us back to town. I was glad to escape all that uphill biking.
Baños is known for its wide range of activities upon offer, so on our last day we decided it was time to be adventurous. At 9am we went off to go canyoning; an activity I wanted to try in San Gil, Colombia where I ended up going paragliding instead. Now it was finally time to abseil down some waterfalls. After driving for about 45 minutes, we got changed into wetsuits, appropriate shoes, put on our harnesses and got a quick round of instructions. I briefly had time to ask myself what the hell I was getting myself into, before we started walking towards the first waterfall. Fortunately it ended up being lots of fun. We abseiled down three waterfalls, the tallest being 30 meters, went sliding down others and even ended up doing a bit of zip lining. When we reached the bottom of the trail I just wanted to keep going. "Off course you do, but that's why we're going rafting this afternoon", was the response I got, and so we did. While the group we went canyoning was huge, it ended up only being the three of us going rafting. According to our instructor that meant we were in for some extra exercise, but I was quite happy about having an upper body workout after all the hiking I'd done since arriving in Ecuador. As we got our basic instructions, however, I suddenly realised that I was terrified of ending up in the water. I spent about a quarter of the time in the boat being terrified, before finally learning to trust the boat and our guide. Eventually I ended up having a great time rafting as well. We returned to our hostel exhausted, but very excited about the day we had just had.
Baños ended up being a lot of fun, which was also why I went there. I could easily have filled up a few more days there, but it was also fine leaving after three days. I've found three days to be an ideal amount of time to spend in almost any city, as you get to experience the essentials without getting restless. On the way back to the hostel on the last night we stopped at the bus station to get our tickets for the following morning, but this time for different destinations. As I headed for Cuenca I was once again on my own, although it turned out it wouldn't be for long.
--
