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.

The jungle book gone real

To break up our week in Baños (which is a whole other story I tell you about later on) we went on a 2 day, 1 night trip to the Amazon. This is probably one of the coolest experiences I've ever had.

In Baños there are loads and loads of different travel agencies trying to sell different activities and trips. So all we did was to walk in to some of them to get a quote on a price for an Amazon trip to go to on the next day. We found Ivaga Tours to be really good value, with a 1 night Amazon trip for just $70 each, with everything included such as entrance fees, food, rubber boots, rain jackets, guides, transport there and back and accommodation.

DAY UNO

We started off in the morning with that usual wait you get as a bonus here in South America when you're in time for something here. Since it was a Sunday there were many people in our group. We were 18 people, including families with kids (which made us feel slightly suspicious if we were really in the right group. It didn't feel right to have a one year old hiking next to you on a two day trip in the jungle) and everyone speaking Spanish. 

Finally we were off in the bus for about an hour before reaching the first stop. This was meant to be a animal sanctuary for wounded animals, who, we had been told earlier, were to be released when they felt better again. In reality it was more like a proper zoo and we felt terrible for being there. The animals seemed anxious and we found out that they were kept here, not because they were wounded, but because they were trying to "protect them" from people who are hunting them. To me that just sounds like proper bullshit and I am still wondering what I can do about this? I am currently researching a bit about animal rights groups in South America, so if anyone knows anything - please give me a shout!

 

So we didn't at all like the first part of the trip, especially not either when we stopped of at a petrol station for an hour because everyone "had to" load up on snacks and drinks for the remaining hour we had in the bus.

But when we reached the actual jungle, things changed to the better when we got to go in the canoes in the Amazonian Pazstas river. It was awesome but the crazy river stream made it a bit scary and I really thought we were gonna fall in any second (and that Guy was gonna drop his iPhone down in the water so that we would be completely camera-less)

We continued on for a little hike in the jungle, where we got a muddy spa treatment, Amazon style.

After that came the highlight of my day; the death swing! It's probably the most frightening swing I've been on in my life, but it was so fun and really made the adrenaline pump. When I think about it now I can only think how easy it would've been to just let go and fall down in the river far, far below and get really hurt. But I guess that's also what makes it a challenge and it's not every day you get to swing in the jungle like Tarzan!

The sweaty hike through the mud & humidity continued until we arrived to the rainbow in Hola Vida waterfall and finally got to have a very refreshing swim here.

The last stop of the day, was the community of the indigenous people. A tribe called Sacha Wasi, which is one of seven indigenous groups that lives in the Ecuadorian Amazon. We got to play with their cute peccary who loved to cuddle, the children made face paints on us and were told about there history. I think it was probably an interesting story if we knew Spanish. Our guide was almost only Spanish speaking and made attempts to translate to us sometimes. Luckily enough there was a woman in our group who was bilingual and could help us out a lot during the day.

It was around this point that we realised that everyone apart from us were doing just a one day trip. When we told our guide that we had paid for and booked the two day trip, he was so surprised that I thought he was gonna choke on his soup and had to call in back up, from Ruma, another guide who lives around here to help us continue our trip, while he drove the rest of the group back to Baños.

This was of course very unexpected and we still wonder if we were booked in with the wrong tour or if there had been a communication problem between the travel agency and the guides or something, so we thought that we were gonna have to join another group the next morning and thought it was gonna be a big hassle trying to prove that we actually booked the two day trip. 

But hey, mañana mañana, right? Things around here seems to have its way of getting solved if you just chill and we couldn't have asked for a better outcome of this whole situation. 

Ruma took us back to the cabaña where we had had lunch earlier that day and the dinner table was already set for two people and we were told that because no one else has booked the two day your in our group, it was just gonna be me, Guy and Ruma hiking around the jungle tomorrow. So yay! We got a private tour as a bonus! (Private tours were like double the price otherwise so we felt extremely grateful and lucky all of a sudden)

The day had been really tiring so that night we went to bed at like 8:30pm and slept really well in bunk beds in our little hut with no electricity.

DAY DOS

The next day we woke up by the sound of a rooster crowing, had breakfast and played with this lovely little gang.

Ruma picked us up from his house next door and we started our 3 hour hike for the day. It was a lot of uphill walking in the heat and I really appreciated the stops along the way where Ruma told us about different plants and insects that we encountered. We got to taste sugar cane juice, straight from a sugar cane, found asthma medicine in a leaf and were shown poisons leaves aswell which looked exactly the same as the previous healthy leaf. (yep, Ruma spoke some English luckily enough for us!) He also showed us how to make a long lasting bracelet from a long pineapple leaf. Once again I was reminded of how freaking cool nature is. It's got everything we need and so much more.

It was a really muddy trek this one so I was super stoked to have rubber boots finally. The most fun part of the hike was when we came down to a stream and had to walk waste high in water and the boots to get to the hidden waterfall. It was so slippery and I was so close to fall with all of my stuff in the water many times, but we made it to the powerful waterfall and had the best swim here. It was amazing being here on our own, just hearing our echoes in the lagoon-like place where the waterfall was and to jump  around as much as we wanted until it got a bit too cold.

It soon got very hot and dry again though when we hiked our way back to the cabaña for lunch, as we walked through a field just beneath the heating sun instead of small paths under all the trees, with plants surrounding us that Ruma had to cut down with his machete in order for us to get through, like we did on the way to the waterfall. 

When we arrived back to the cabaña we were exhausted and felt good about the fact that we didn't have any more activities today, more than eating lunch and chilling out in the hammocks by the river.

All the meals we received were really great and filling. Considering all the confusion with our booking of the tour, we were glad that we were atleast registered to get vegetarian food, but somewhere along the way my request of food without egg and milk aswell must've gotten lost because almost every meal came with an egg.. Even though I tried to explain several times that I didn't eat that. 

After lunch anyway we almost fell asleep in the hammocks, since we had to wait almost 3 hours just for our lift back (we had to wait for the day tour of the day to get done with their activities and go back to Baños with them).

This is without a doubt one of the best trips I've ever been to, so if you ever get a chance to visit the Amazon for a night - do it! I definately feel as if a childhood Mowgli-Baloo dream have gone through. 

Our stop over in the historic capital of Cuenca

Next on our travel itinerary was Baños (the adventure capital)  on the east side  of Ecuador. To get here from Montañita on the coast, we could either take a bus back to Guyaquil and spend a night there or take a little detour to Cuenca in the Andes mountains instead as there are no direct buses between Montañita and Baños. We decided to go for the detour (Montañita - Guyaquil for a couple of hours - Cuenca) and spend 2 nights in Cuenca, and I'm so happy that we did. 

With its cobblestone streets, beautiful buildings and nice temperature it is hard not to fall in love with this historic capital in Ecuador.

Unfortunately we arrived pretty late the first night, after a 2 hour bus journey from Montañita to Guyaquil and another 4 hours down to Cuenca, we felt exhausted. But it was the best feeling to get off the bus and it wasn't annoyingly humid and hot. I haven't appreciated fresh air like that in a long time and I was surprised that I for the first time ever, actually felt better to be back up on high altitudes (Cuenca is 2500 meters over sea level! Which is also why the bus journey was horrible, my ears kept popping during the whole journey!).

Anyway, arriving tired and hungry pretty late at night is never the ideal situation for a vegan. But since we stayed at a hostel which had the best location in town, wequickly realised that there was a vegetarian restaurant located near to us and according to Happy Cow - was opened during this late hour. 



So we started a quick power walk past the park where, apparently, many people gets their phone stolen (still traumatized, but what don't you do for vegan food when you're starving?!) and when we finally found the place, it was shut. I almost cried and without internet connection, we gave up on trying to find another of the few vegetarian restaurants around in Cuenca and just did what I think every vegan would do in our situation - went to the nearest pizza place, ordered a veggie pizza without cheese and then smuggled in guacamole from the Mexican place next door (where their only veg-option was not available) to make it yummy and not dry.

We had the best nights sleep that night.

It is really a shame that we only got to have one whole day here really, I wish we had at least one day more. Many foreigners comes here to study Spanish, or to work and I can definately see why this is a great place to live. Walking around in Cuenca, felt like talking a stroll somewhere in Rome. It is so pretty and clean as well and we were close to trip and fall many times as it is impossible not to gaze up at all the cool buildings around the city. Not only that - we found that it is pretty cheap too!

Unfortunately it decided to rain on our day here, but we had time for a long walk and it was cosy to hide away from the rain in a little Italian cafe with a coffee and free ciabatta.

As I mentioned, there seems to be a few vegetarian restaurants around here but we were unlucky in our hunt for them. One was closed and the other was impossible to find, but we did manage to get some good food anyway.

We found a vegetarian restaurant called Quinoa Vegetarian Restaurant, with the most incredible interior.

I think we were the only people there because the price for food here was kind of expensive in comparison with other restaurants. A main ranged between $6-9, but there were lots of choices on the menu, even for vegans! I still regret not trying the quinoa paella with tofu, I mean when you are at a Quinoa restaurant you kind of have to have quinoa, and so, with my Ecuadorian dish, vegan-styled Guatita with soy meat, I felt obliged to order a hot quinoa drink which was better than the actual over-priced main.

Guy, my beloved English man, on the other hand, was super happy about his vegetarian English Breakfast with beans, vegan sausage, toast, grilled tomato, mushrooms, fries and yeah, you know the lot.

If you are as unlucky as us though, and cannot find those freaking vegetarian restaurants that are supposed to be around there somewhere, do not be dissappointed. Because, for the first time since travelling in South America, we found so many different Indian Restaurants here. So for our last supper, we ended up in Restaurant Taj Mahal, where they had plenty of vegan options and the best thing: a salad bar where you could help yourself to a plate full of popcorn!!!

We slept pretty well that night too.