Las Aguas de Baños

Happy to be moving on from the hussle and bustle of Quito we packed up our bags Thursday morning and headed for Baños with our new found traveling crew.  Sandra, from Germany, just finished University and has been traveling for the last five months; Erik, from Holland, is wondering around North and South America over the next year or so trying to figure out what he wants to do, but is pretty dead set on being a rock star; Nadine is a 60 year old women from a little Canadian island off of Victoria who takes off to travel the world every January (except the winter she was diagnosed with cancer in which she was sincerely pissed off that she had to cancel her ticket to Thailand-she is currently free and clear of the disease and back to adventuring!)  They all smoke like chimneys and each has a wicked, yet utterly enduring sense of humor.  They have truly become our traveling family.



The bus ride was quick and beautiful, crossing lush agricultural land.  It was cool to see the variety of crops in the area and we are sufficiently jealous of their rich, black soil.  Baños is a small town surrounded by high mountains and has every adventure sport you could think of available for the many tourists that paint the streets. Paragliding, mountain biking, bridge jumping, ziplines, canyoning whitewater rafting; you name it they provide it.  Since we are biking and rafting on our journey into Machu Picchu we decided to rent a dune buggie for a day to explore the roads and take in the breathtaking waterfalls and mountainous scenery.  It was quite an amazing experience.....except for getting passed by the busses that apparently don´t feel the need to slow down on curves or wait for oncoming traffic to pass...but minus those few close encounters we had an absolutely fabulous time!




Baños is also know for its hotsprings (hence the name) and multiple spas provided very inexpensive massages and various other treatments.  Since we would probably never treat ourselves-and could definitely never afford-luxerious pampering in the states we decided it would provide for a nice and relaxing afternoon. Was it ever!  We both received a mud exfoliation (pretty much they put clay on us and wrapped us in newspaper-surprising enjoyable) steam bath/cold water exchange (good for re-setting the central nervous system) and full body massages (need I say more?) Wow....all that coupled with our last nights visit to the hotsprings made for quite a relaxing few days.  The town also had quite a bustling night life with unique bars, crowded discotecs, and a surprising amount of Karaoke joints.  We found out quickly that our traveling crew loved to dance as much as we did which made for some really great nights of rocking out (in which we found our venting hiking shirts to be the perfect attire).

Another fun aspect here was exploring the extensive food markets and experiencing a lot more local cuisine.  There was a central mercado in the middle of town which had very inexpensive almuerzos (lunch) and a variety of juice, vegetable and meat stands.  Directly behind our hostel was a wild Sunday market which had probably every fruit and veggie you could imagine, chickens on leashes, enitire roasted pigs, and the famous roasted guinea pig-still pretty much fully intact, teeth and all. We didn´t try the guinea pig (Cuy) here, but I imagine we will before the trip is over.  Perhaps our two favorite street meals were fried plantanes with cheese and a dish consisting of large corn kernals, a bit of onion and tomato and pig fat for flavor. Don´t be fooled by the thought of straight pig fat....it was delicious! All in all Baños provided a wonderful few days.  It was nice to be able to relax and enjoy our surroundings and we´ll never forget the enjoyment of being surrounded by great food and getting swallowed up in the chaos of local exhanges.