Living La Vida Loca

While anyone who knows any conversational Spanish knows that when you “gotta go” you ask where the “baños” are.  But in Ecuador, Baños is also the name of a city that is now famous for attracting anyone into extreme sports – anything you can do to fly without a plane, zipline over a deep canyon, scale a waterfall, swing off a cliff in a metal ball – whatever makes a normal person scream.  If you want to do any of these, Baños is the hot spot for you!  However, Andrew and I got recommendations to spend some time in this energetic town for another reason – it’s scenic beauty.  Nestled in a deep valley in the Andes, the setting for all this crazy stuff is breathtaking.  The town itself is actually nothing to write home about, but the scenery is second to none.

Ruthie had been to Ecuador last year and told us that we had to stay at the same Airbnb she had in Baños – and she scored big.  In reality, the beautiful casita we were in was on the other side of a rushing river from the center of Baños, and this made it even more attractive.  Andrew and I had breakfast each morning that included fresh bread baked locally that was supplied by our hosts, and the view from our terrace was spectacular.

We decided to take a morning tour that had been recommended by a few people that was supposed to give us a well-rounded view of the area.  We hopped on the typical open air truck (called a “cheva” (CHEE-vah) along with a smattering of local families with little kids, other tourists, and lots of teenage thrill seekers.  The tour actually took us primarily from waterfall to waterfall lining the valley, with stops along the way to either watch or participate in any of many extreme thrill rides.  You could be loosely harnessed and fly across a deep canyon, get locked in a metal cage and swing and rotate over an equally deep ravine, or zipline from a series of questionably cabled platforms over any of a few jungle-like passes.  We opted for the family-friendly, cabled floating metal container (containing about a dozen of us) that swooped across a valley, passed a big waterfall and back again.  It was a bit of a thrill and very beautiful (when I wasn’t screaming).

But we DID do this….

Our last stop on the Cheva tour was a lovely preserve with meandering and rushing glacial water flows, exotic plant life, and a set of suspension bridges that criss-cross between platforms overlooking waterfalls dotting the mountainsides.  We ran out of time and inclination to do more life threatening activities 🙂 but we did enjoy watching others hobble and bobble over the bridges.

Our last evening in Baños we had the delightful pleasure of getting together with new/old friends we’d met on our day at Quilotoa – Jhonathan and Daniela from Colombia.  They saw from looking at our Facebook pages that we were in Baños, texted us and said they’d love to have dinner together as they had the same stop here as we did.  They were going on to Peru but this was a great treat and we are hoping to both visit them someday and have them come to California as well.

On balance, Baños was not our favorite place in Ecuador from a destination standpoint, but we made the best of it, got to hang out with some people we enjoy, and then move on to our very last stop in this amazing country – Termas de Papallatca.

Stay tuned…

Esther