Baños, which in spanish also means bathrooms, is a small valley town that has become quite popular amongst tourists from abroad but also Ecuadorians for it’s beauty and adventure sports activities. Here you can go paragliding, canyoning, puenting, bungee jumping, white water rafting, mountain biking, Quad riding and much more for quite reasonable prices. But after 3 days of hiking, I was looking forward to Baños’ other attraction: it’s hot springs. Baños has several hot springs with different temperatures open to the public, with the hottest one being around 40 degrees. One of many waterfalls in the areas even falls in to town, which makes for a very scenic hot spring experience.
After relaxing in the hot springs the first day, it was time to go see the famous Casa del Arbol (tree house) the next day and hop on the swing at the end of the world. This is a treehouse built with two swings on the edge of a cliff and is probably the setting of hundreds of Facebook profile photos, including mine now 😉 It’s not really “scary” to swing off the cliff as the swings seems quit safe but it’s also fun to hang around and watch the people get creative.
As for the food in Baños, I got quite lucky when I arrived, since there was a food festival and was impressed by something called Huevitos chilenos, which are small balls of deep fried dough (zalabia) and served with molasses (sugar cane honey). Sugar cane in general was used quite a lot in Baños. They sold the stalks, juice and are even famous for their molasses based taffy (3asaleya).
A small but very scenic town.
In the background, you can see the waterfall that falls in to twon.
Casa del Arbol!
This was the food festival on the main square.
And here you can see one of probably hundreds of shops that make sugar cane taffy. Most of them hand out samples to tourists passing by.
On the last night I got lucky again and found myself at a free street concert. There weren’t many people that night but those who were there were having a blast.
Even in a small town in the mountains of Ecuador, you can see great example of inclusion.