I was a little afraid that it would be quite expensive, but found a pleasant surprise in the first place I asked. It wasn't expensive at all. The bigger problem was just, that it was full. As was the second and the third place. I kept walking around in the dark, little town. and it started raining. All the hostels I asked at where full, until I found one that offered me a private room but at a higher cost.
I told them I would come back if I didn't find anything else, when they found a shared bedroom for me, at 8$, including breakfast.
When I got to the room I had it all for myself. I dropped my bags, grabbed my purse and left to find something to eat.
As usual in touristic places there was someone offering pizza (or something like that), but I had already seen the place I wanted to eat at on my way to the hostel.
It was a tiny local restaurant selling meat and 'tortilla de papa' and salad. Since I was still being a vegetarian, at least at far as possible, I ordered two plates with potates and salad and some kind of sauce.
In general the food in Ecuador isn't as good as in Peru, but during my time there I found my favourites. And tortilla de papa was definitely one of them, next to tortilla de maiz, grilled banana filled with cheese, and something that included green banana, fish and mayonese.
After that I returned to the hostel, trying to find out what I could do these days (there where A LOT of options). By that I had also gotten a roommate, a girl from Slovakia.
We stayed up a while, chatting on the balcony, and it felt great to be able to talk to a girl again. We got along really well, and so we decided to spend the following day together, walking up to the ' tree house'.
La Casa del Arbol
The tree house is located on the border of a hill, and has a large swing above nothing.
The walk up took us quite a while, but Baños is located in a beautiful valley with green hills all around it, and the climate is great.
So we walked and talked, and studied the plants we found.
It was the first time I saw how a granadilla grows and we also passed by a mandarine tree (we got a little off trail and ended up in someone's garden).
The tree house was quite busy, since there was a whole bunch of people, including a lot of Ecuatorian tourists. We had to wait a while for the swing, but it was worth it.
But unfortanately there wasn't that much time for everybody, and soon I got off the swing again and let the others go.
After that we walked back down, and went to get some lunch on town. Zuzana was a little more 'tourist' than me in general, and I was in a part of my travels where I was also enjoying a little more of 'mainstream tourism', so we went to a little Mexican place and I had my favourite dish: cheese and bean nachos.
We walked around town for a little bit and Zusanna intoduced me to another one of Ecuador's delights, the chocobanana. It's nothing more than a simple frozen banana covered in chocolate, but it looked delicious. I didn't order one myself that day because I'd already had some ice cream, but I knew there was no way around it and saved it for the next day.
The town of Baños is quite small, but due to its many possibilities for adventure sports, waterfalls and hot springs, it's one of the most touristic destinations in Ecuador. It's quiet and its arcitecture had nothing particulary special, but it's a nice place to walk around. Around the corner of the main square we found some stores selling sweets. Guys were making them right there, and it looked like some physical exercise. We guessed it was something with a lot of sugar, and the guys working moved it until its color changed from brown to white. What exactly it was, and what the technique was all about, I have no idea.In the afternoon we rested a while at the hostel, where we met our new roommate, a German guy.
Together we decided to go to the famous hot springs at night.
There are various hot springs in and around Baños, and we decided to go to the closest and maybe most common one's.
When we got there, we found out that it was full of people, and eventhough there were more than one pool, it was hard to find a space. But dealing with the crowd of people and wearing the stupid-looking but required bath cap was definitely worth it.
The pool was next to an illuminated waterfall and the water was that hot that I had to change to the ice cold pool every once in a while. I enjoyed it a lot, and felt fresh and relaxed when we returned to the hostel.
There I stayed up quite late because finally I had acess to a computer where I could talk to Rodrigo.
The Waterfall Route
On the next day after the (delicious) breakfast at the hostel I went with the German guy and an Israeli, who also joined us in our room, to rent some bikes and explore the 'route of the waterfalls'.
In reality it's a mainly downhill road that leads through the valley, accompanied by a river and various waterfalls. At each one of the waterfalls there's some kind of zip line or cable car or something similar installed, and we also passed a lot of tourists in 'chivas', open, colorful buses, usally playing music.
We didn't join any of the activities offered, but we did go to the biggest waterfall of all, which was an about one-hour hike. The best part was a tunnel, that lead to a platform behind the waterfall. It took some time to get there, because there was a university field trip visiting the waterfall as well and so there were a lot of people. But that was already it, and we returned to our bikes to continue down the road.
The last stop was a waterfall with a natural pool underneath it, which was the reason why we took towels and bathing suits with us.
The trail down to the waterfall was surrounded by a beautiful garden, and the waterfall itself was also beautiful.
We met a bunch of other people there, and went for a swim in the pool.
After playing around in the water for a while it got time to go back to town.
In the morning I was all motivated to bike back uphill and not to pay the truck, but by then I was fine with the easy option, and so all of us (we were about 11 people, all with bikes) got on a truck and had a fun ride back to town. It was incredible how the driver installed 11 bikes on his truck, but the bikes and we arrived unharmed in Baños.
Since we all got along well we decided to meet up again for dinner after returning the bikes to the different agencies.
We met at the lates hour at the market, and got the last plate of food before they closed the doors.
After dinner we went to a bar and stayed there for a while, watching some hilarious wrestling.
Then we went to the hostel where the other guys where staying. There we talked, played pool (well, I just watched, since I'm a terrible player), and had some beers.
Most of them were Germans, and after a long time not talking German I enjoyed their company a lot.
The following day was already my last day in Baños, since I had decided to travel on to Latacunga and the hostel was beginning to charge double price because of some holiday.
I packed my stuff in the morning, and stayed a while in the hostel writing the blog. I also wanted to talk to Rodrigo again, but at some point the hostel turned off the computers and the internet because of some reparations they had to make.
A little pissed off I went for a walk to pass time, and in the end I liked it a lot. I went down to the river where I found a nice spot under the bridge, watched the people doing swing jump and read my book. I also discovered some climbing routes there.
After a while I went back to the hostel but obviously the light had not returned yet, and it was getting late for me to leave, since I didn't want to arrive in Latacunga at night.
So got my stuff and went to the bus terminal. The busride was short, as most busrides in Ecuador, but I still arrived in the last light.
No comments:
Post a Comment