The weekend of Halloween, I went with several of the younger members of my family to Baños. Baños is about three hours south of Quito and is right at the mouth of the Amazon rainforest. It's a huge tourist destination and everyone I met had been telling me that I had to go.
We left late-ish Friday night on a bus that can only be described as 70's disco era. It had blue and orange circle lights all over the ceiling and played several different Chuck Norris movies. Apparently people here really love Chuck Norris.
Anyway, Baños is spectacular. It's a smallish town full of tourists on the weekends and hippies during the week. We stayed at a gorgeous art hotel called La Casa del Abuelo that is run by the friend of one of my host brothers. Besides being a gorgeous place with individually painted murals in every room, the owner is wonderfully nice and serves fantastic healthy breakfast and seriously kick-ass fancy chef-prepared meals every night that are included in the cost of your stay. If you are ever in Baños, stay here!
I also made a pretty sweet friend while I was staying in the hotel. I opened my window one afternoon to find this staring back at me:
In related notes, Peacock mating calls are extremely LOUD when you are trying to sleep at 4:00 in the morning.
We did a ton of different things in Baños (eating, walking, swimming, drinking, etc.), but one of my favorite things was visiting waterfalls. The first fall we visited was located at the end of a 30-minute walk through the rainforest. The path was gorgeous and looked like this:
We were the only ones at the waterfall at the time, so we spent some time swimming and enjoying the views. The water was icy! but it was still really cool to swim in a waterfall.
The other large waterfall we visited is called the Pailón del Diablo, or the Devil's Cauldron. It is so named for the combination of the extreme force the waterfall comes down and the circle shaped rock formation at the base of the waterfall that create the appearance of a steaming cauldron. Here's a shot of the volcano falling.
Besides visiting waterfalls, the people I was traveling with were playing a show at La Casa del Abuelo on Saturday night. They play mostly Celtic music and have a mix of tons of different cool instruments. Their show was fantastic, and afterwards we went out to have a few drinks, and then ended up at a volcano weather station. It was super dark, really high, quite cold, and extremely fun. Here's a shot of the tree house at the weather station. Look at that crazy cool sky view!
We also visited the baths that give Baños its name. We went for the popular Baños de Cajon treatment, which involves: walking barefoot outside on a path of sharp rocks, screaming at a mountain, sitting in an extremely hot personal sauna/wooden steam box, having ice water poured over you while you are in the box, being hosed down with ice water, and then eating some delicious fresh fruit while wearing a mud mask.
If this sounds crazy, it's because it completely is. It's so ridiculous that it's amazingly fun. I felt great after sweating, screaming, and freezing out all my negative energy. This was one of the best weekends that I've spent in Ecuador so far, and if it's at all possible I will be returning here before I leave!
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