baños de agua santa, ecuador

Baños is a great little spot. There's a lot to do for such a small town. We only dabbled in a handful of activities but were really impressed.


Zip-lining
We didn't really do our research with this one. We just walked into any old tourism joint and asked to do zip-lining. Later we found out that we really hadn't chosen the most exciting, nor the cheapest option. The zip-lines outside of Baños along the bicycle track are much better value. We had fun on our first zip-lining adventure nonetheless.


Cable Carriages
There are cable carriages running across the rivers and they run over and next to waterfalls all over the place. We could have spent a day just going on all of the different cable carriages. Again, these are all out near the bike track outside of town.


The one we went on was fantastic. We wondered into the back of a cafe to see a parked cable car. The guy had used a truck engine, strapped up a cable and a crate and there you have it - a cable car. It cost us $1.50 to ride across the river and in front of a spectacular waterfall. Upon arrival, we walked over a bridge to get to the bottom of the waterfall. The guy was watching us, and as we stepped back into the crater, he started up the truck engine to bring us back.


Waterfalls
There are 10 waterfalls along the bike track outside of Baños, and for us, the last one was the most thrilling. It has been a dream of Kassandra's to stand behind a waterfall. And with a lot of bending, crouching, crab-walking through the passageway to the back of the waterfall, her dream came true.


Thermal Springs
We visited the thermal spring closest to our hostel, Las Piscinas de la Virgen. We visited it twice, once at night and once in the morning. After donning a creepy shower cap, we stepped into a pool of 42 degree water supplied by a nearby volcano. There is a big sign listing all of the minerals that are in the water which are what provides the water with it's supposed healing properties. But when you step into the water, you're not thinking about how those minerals are going to heal your ailments. All that we could think about was how fucking hot it was.


End of the world swing
The End of The World Swing at Casa Del Arbol has a rather melodramatic name. We had assumed that there was some kind of danger involved in having a swing on it, like it would be over a vertical-drop cliff and that with even the slightest slip of your bum, you could potentially plummet to your death. We will put your mind at ease. Below the swing there is a modest hill that rolls off into bushes and there is a very unnecessary harness to prevent the practically non-existent potential of bum-slippage.

It's hard to enjoy your swing as you can feel the waiting eyes watching you as you politely take your turn for, let's be honest, your photo op. We saw a lot of selfie-sticks on this thing. But we actually really enjoyed this little spot. Beyond our turn on the swing, we entertained ourselves by watching the donkey and the pretty rainbow, having a go on the zip-line and of course photographing the amazing view.


Vege Food
As always, we hung out at the same food joints. Actually we tried to hang out at the same joints but it seemed that the guy from our favourite place (Sativa Studio Cafe) was always too lazy to open his restaurant. But for the one time he was open we had the most amazing "7 Spices" coffee and vegan tamale with a beautiful garden salad. The salad ingredients were freshly picked from the backyard and it was bloody good. The second joint Casa Hood, was also a bit hit and miss with it's opening times but the grub was tasty.