Sur America: Baños de Agua Santa and Tungurahua

I fear that we have dropped a bit behind on our blogging.. Baños was our next stop after the Galapagos, with a little stop over in Quito for the night. A bus from Quito to Baños takes about 4 hours and we were happy to be settled in a place that we knew we would be sticking around in for a bit. We had booked 6 nights at a hostel called Plantas y Blanco (Plants and White). We soon found out that this place was spread between three locations all located on the same block but you had to walk out and around to get to each place in Plantas y Blanco World.

After we got our bags into a room and our heads wrapped around the outlay of the building complex we decided to explore the streets of Baños. Our wanderings soon brought us to The Stray Dog, a brew house that had some real beers on tap. Kasey had a Stout that had some Porter features and I had an IPA that wasn´t all that hoppy, but none the less the beer we had there was better than Pilsener, or Brahma (Corona-esk). We took to the streets again in search for some real food and eventually found our way back to the hostel and a snooze.

The next morning we planned to do a hike up to the Virgin that overlooks and protects the city. After finding the dirt path that started at the end of a street we passed a cemetary and soon the path turned to stone steps. After about 30 minutes of stair we reached the top (Kasey and I tried to run the last few flights). The view of the city was pretty amazing, it is really cool to get a birdseye view of Baños and we thought we might get a view of Tungurahua (the volcano that is still erupting ash clouds and small piroclastic flows) but clouds obstructed our view. We basically pooped around the rest of the day, relaxing and hanging out with our new friends Ben and Yasmin from the UK, Patrick from Canada and our traveling buddy Luke. That night we found some personal pizzas for only 2.50 to stuff our faces with!!

Christmas Eve, or as Luke has trained us the past few weeks: Luke´s Birthday and Christmas Eve. We started the day off with another hike up to the cross called Bellavista. This trail was on the other side of the town and equally tough as a leg burning climb. Bellavista looks west over the city, and the Virgen looks northeast. The city of Baños sits in a valley, river on one side and steep walls on the other, so both of these hikes took us up to the top of the ´walls.´ We had told Luke that he was not going to go hungry that night and I don´t think we failed. We made a lasagna with tons of veggies and square lasagna noodles. The kitchen was stuffed full with other travelers cooking up extravagant meals from all over the world! Our meal turned out great and I think everyone was fully stuffed, we fed six people with ease. We also had to embarass Luke with a cake with his age in candles (30), I think he really enjoyed the feast and celebration!

Christmas Day!! I woke up a bit early to play santa by stuffing some of my hiking socks (they were clean!) with some chocolates as well as Nesquik for Kasey and Milo for Luke. I got oreos and a bottle opener and Kasey got an IOU for a day pack! After exchanging those gifts we decided that a hike was in order, mainly we wanted to work off some of that meal last night! Dinner that night was to be a multi-traveler effort. Luke started early boiling a can of condensed milk to make toffee for Banoffee Pie and made up some tasty pasta salad; Ben and Yaz whipped up some Yorkshire Puddins, and gravy; Kasey and I made up some smashed potatos with garlic; and we bought a rotisserie chicken! What a Christmas Feast!! I barely had room for Banoffee Pie but we all know that desserts go in a different stomach ;)

The day after Christmas we geared up for another hike. Having not seen the Volcan Tungurahua since we pulled into town we wanted to get a close up view and the town of Rúntun would hopefully give us what we wanted. The hike up to the view point was grueling, up muddy trails, past greenhouses and farms, through pastures and finally we reached the top. Tungurahua was mostly covered in cloud but we could see many ´puffs´ of ash as the volcano was constantly burping. The clouds parted a few times but never revealed the entire mountain. The volcano´s activity had been a concern for us before we even got to Baños but the locals were never worried about it and all of the ash was blowing off to the south (away from Baños). After snapping a few pictures of the ash clouds we headed down and hung out in our favorite cafe, Casa Hood. This is also where we both exchanged books, I won Game of Thrones and Kasey changed out for Marching Powder.

We had come to Baños hoping to do the bike ride that took you to all the waterfalls along the valley but the weather never cooperated with us, it always seemed to be raining in the mornings that we wanted to go. So after being thwarted again we decided to get some reading, application work, catch up on emails etc. We took a break to watch an Ecuadorian do the Puenting (which literally translates to Bridging) which is kind of a rope swing-bungie with no bungie in the ropes. Looked like a back problem waiting to happen unless you did it correctly. After watching the puenting we heard about being able to rent quads and drive up to The Towers; on the other side of the river from Baños and up to the top of a ridge we would be able to see Tungurahua and Baños below, or so we hoped. We ended up renting the quad, and the two of us raced up to the top hoping to beat the clouds and get a picture worthy view! The ride up was awesome, we twisted our way up switchbacks on a brick road climbing higher and higher. We stalled just before The Towers (that were now covered in pea-soup thick fog) and snapped a few shots of the ash pouring from Tungurahua and Baños lit up below. Kase even took the wheel for a bit on the way down, it was a great way to end our stay in Baños!! Kasey also squeezed in a trip to the thermal baths that Baños is named after. We then celebrated our success with fat/thick hamburgers that night.

As our stay in Baños was coming to an end we decided to head to Cuenca instead of going to an Ecofarm called Vrindavan. I was feeling a bit under the weather and we didn´t feel good about going into the woods for a week if I wasn´t feeling the best. So here we are in Cuenca, we just celebrated New Years here with the locals. We will do another post on Cuenca to give you all the details, but for now I would say that Cuenca is one of our favorite cities in Ecuador, and I would definitely retire here ;)

Ben, I´m sorry, but I didn´t see any signs that said Via a Baños...