Our time in Ecuadors Bathroom

My, my, my.. Baños de Agua Santa. Where do I start? There's so much to say about this little town in the middle of the mountains. We've had the best time here and I have to say that you are missing out if you visit Ecuador and don't come here.

Yoga classes with Yoga Roots
The town itself isn't that spectacular, although it does have some nice squares and a few things to see and do. I would really recommend to book a yoga session with Alana at Yoga Roots! We joined her for a yoga class for $6 and it was really great! It was the first yoga class for Guy and he really enjoyed it as well, mostly because Alana was an amazing teacher and really helped with getting the asanas right and making sure that we were comfortable. She is definitely one of the best yoga teachers I've had the opportunity to meet. Find out more about Yoga Roots here.

Other than that you'll find that there are plenty of ways to satisfy your sweets cravings in one of the many candy stores in town, where they make Melcocha right infront of you - Ecuador's speciality candy. The majority of it is made in Baños. It's a local specialty, because it is made from raw cane sugar only and there are loads of sugar canes in this area. Best part about this delicious toffee candy? That it is vegan of course! I bought six large pieces with coconut flavour for only $1!

But it is really the surroundings in this area that is the exciting part about this town. Baños is the adventure capital of Ecuador and there are plenty of ways to spend your money on different thrilling activities and tours (the travel agencies are everywhere around town) like white water rafting, zip lining, bungy jumping and much more. We were glad that we had a whole week to spend and decided carefully between everything. But in the end, the choices for us were pretty simple. We knew wanted to climb, see cool views and we wanted to see the Amazon (Baños is the gateway to the Amazon after all, see my post about our Amazon trip here.). 
This is what we ended up doing:

La Casa del Árbol

On our first day we went on a hike up the hills with amazing views over the town. The goal of the hike was to get to the famous swing at Casa del Árbol (the treehouse), which is a big tourist attraction. It is possible to be lazy and just take a taxi or a bus up, many travel agencies even try to sell it as a tour. We decided to D.I.Y, which only invloved one $1 fee for the entrance. But we didn't feel cocky about this walking-there-decision for too long, as it turned out to be the biggest work out we've had in a while.

It was basically just a big climb, but at the same time such a fun hike, especially since a group of local men working with fruit picking up in the hills invited us for a fruit break with them that made our day.

After taking one wrong turn, we were finally up on the top about 2,5 sweaty hours later. So we had a corn on the cob at the hilltop restaurant before having one of the most amazing swing experiences of my life.

It wasn't until we started to relax that we realised how much our feet were aching. We were planning on taking the bus back but realised we just missed it and we're gonna have to wait another two hours if we wanted to take it back to town. To hell with that we thought and started to walk back down past some more nice scenery, but I honestly felt like crying - cold, hungry and with that feet ache.

And so, like a gift from heaven, we met the second group of nice local people of the day who picked us up on the back of their truck so that we could check off hitchhiking in Ecuador from the bucket list. It was one of the best moments of the day and I wanted to hug the driver for saving the day (and my feet)

Canyoning

Canyoning is basically climbing down waterfalls and we couldn't leave Baños with its 60 surrounding waterfalls without doing this, and so we did. We booked our half-day tour with travel agents Imagine Ecuador.

We were lucky again, because apparently it wasn't very popular doing canyoning today so we got our own private tour for just $30, which included full gear (wet suit, shoes, helmet and the lot) a English speaking guide, lunch at the end and photos that our guide took of us with a Go Pro.

This tour is the most fun we've had! We were abseiling down 4 waterfalls, with the last one being the highest at 25 meters (although it felt MUCH higher!). It was definitely a challenge, getting splashed with waterfall water in my eyes and at the same time trying to focus on where I put my feet on the slippery stone wall. I also have to mention our guide who was the funniest man ever, and such a nutter! He jumped down the waterfalls as if he was just jumping down a sidewalk or something.

Termas de la Virgen
The great thing about Baños and all its watery and chilling activities, is that it has a big healing thermal pool just in the outskirt of the city centre. We walked straight there as soon as we were back in town from the canyoning to warm ourselves up. The entrance fee is just $2, but then we felt sick of it after just half an hour, because it was pretty crowded.

Ruta de las Cascadas

On our last day in this amazing town, we felt like we had to do the number one thing to do here, according to TripAdvisor: cycle the "Ruta de las Cascadas" (The Route of the Waterfalls).
So we went to the nearest travel agency to rent bikes, helmets and locks for only $5 each and as a bonus we got a map of the route (but the map was pretty useless as the route is very hard to miss and/or get lost in!). 

The route is 18 km long and ends at El Pailon del Diablo (Devil's Cauldron). We'd heard rumours that it was all downhill from Baños, but we realised it wasn't entirely true. We did have to use our legs.

The view from the bike is stunning all the way, but unfortunately, most of the route goes on the main car road. It was super scary having big trucks coming up next to you, especially when we had to go through a small tunnel where cars goes as well (luckily enough, it was only one car tunnel we had to go through!).

But then there were also these cool, cobbled road which were almost car-free and we could actually enjoy the views of the 6 waterfalls along the way. At some points we even cycled through tiny waterfalls ourselves!

Before we knew it we were already made it to the entrance of El Pailon del Diablo, the famous enormous waterfall. A local guy even had to wave us in to the bike parking space, before we realised that we were there. From the entrance we had to walk for about 15 minutes downhill and also pay $1,50 each for the entrance fee before we saw the monster waterfall. This is without a doubt the most loco, monster-huge, waterfall I've seen in my life.

Even though you cannot really swim in this crazy waterfall, you can count on getting wet from it anyway! We were able to walk, climb and sometimes crawl in tunnels next to the waterfall to get to the different levels of platforms just next to it. We were absolutely soaked afterwards, which was great for the walk uphill back to the bikes.

I think that me and Guy weren't too amazed by the Ruta Las Cascadas, because we had gone on this road in bus many times before we did this (this is the same road we went on to get to the Amazon, and when we did the Canyoning tour in Rio Blanco as well), so it felt a bit, been there done that and that is also why we kind of just rushed through and arrived to the El Pailon del Diablo only an hour after leaving Baños. But, it was definitely worth doing!

To get back to Baños we caught one of the many small white buses that we could bring the bikes on and for $2 it drove us back to town.

Of course we had time to do my favourite thing of all: EAT

There is only one 100% vegetarian restaurant in Baños. It's called Sativa Studio Cafe and has the cosiest interior and the best vegan burger I've had since being in South America. I do understand why they brag about it on all of their signs.

The menu isn't big at all, there is only three mains to choose between so we tried two of them. The tamales with a huge organic salad on the side (they grow most of the veggies in the backyard) and, of course, the veggie burger which even came with vegan pesto. You can understand why I did a vegan happy-dance for this food feast.

Another place to recommend for hungry vegans is Kichua Restaurant, who promotes themselves mainly with their vegetarian menu, but they unfortunately serve meat as well. We've gone here a few times because it is the cheapest eating-out option for us that we found. The lentil burger was only $3,50 for example, and the burrito $4,50.

The most fancy dinner we had during our week in Baños, was definately when we visited Casa Hood. Half of the menu is vegetarian, but it was pretty pricey for us and the staff seems very grumpy all the time. On the other hand, the seitan steak with brown rice and salad was to die for.