Baños was really nice. Probably one of my favorite destinations. On the bus there, we met a kid named Milton. He was one of the street children who get on the bus to sell candy or other odd things to make some money. But he wasn’t annoying like the rest… very charming and cute. So we bought some candy and talked to him for a half hour, then when he got off the bus, we gave him a dollar. As our bus was stuck in traffic for a few minutes, we could see him jumping up and down on the sidewalk and running to follow us and wave. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of him. Then later, this woman and her kids and a puppy got on the bus and we also talked to her and held her puppy for a while (she was going to stick him in the overhead bin!). So cute! See picture below.
We arrived to Baños late in the day, checked in to our hostal, and found some food to eat. The first place we ate was Casa Hood… they had plenty of vegetarian food, but were out of gluten, which was a disappointment… we also apparently showed up on movie night and got to watch “What the *^&$! do we know?” which was really really weird.
In the morning we rented bikes and went on the 15km downhill trek out of town where we passed several waterfalls and took a cablecar (only a single cable… yikes) across the gorge. Ultimately we arrived at the town and river “Rio Verde”… yes, it really was green. Jenna wasn’t feeling great after biking so far, but I made her hike down to the Pailon del Diablo waterfall anyway. And it was the biggest waterfall I’ve ever seen. Check out the video below.
We took a camioneta (basically, a truck for hire) back to town. We wanted to eat dinner at some particular place that I now forget… we couldn’t find it, so we decided on Cafe Hood (not to be confused with Casa Hood above). It was amazing. Jenna had a burrito that was delicious and I had some indian food that hit the spot. Yum yum.
After dinner we went looking for pirate DVDs and I ended up buying a CD of Soda Stereo’s greatest hits. $1! They are a great band from Argentina and definitely worth checking out. Then we went back to the hostal, listened to the CD on their stereo system, and played a game of chess.
The next morning we found some of the famous taffy that they make in the doorways of the taffy shops, bought bus tickets, and headed to Riobamba…
Pictures…
A really nice abandoned house that we saw on the way to Baños… odd
Waterfall pictures (each is a different one)
Video of the Pailon del Diablo (54 megs) - don’t download unless you have broadband