Weekend trip to Baños

Baños is a sleepy little resort town four hours south-east of Quito. It is known for its thermal baths: mineral water heated underground by its proximity to an active volcano. When we left Quito on Friday afternoon for Baños, we knew all this. We just didn’t know how active the volcano would become.

Tunguragua is the volcano towering over the town. After decades of inactivity, it came back to life in the late 1990’s. The town of Baños is on the north-east side of the volcano and relatively protected by the topography and prevailing winds. When the volcano first started going off, Baños and all the other towns surrounding Tunguragua were evacuated. Since then, it’s been rumbling gently with a few minor explosions from time to time. When I was in Baños two years ago, the volcano was covered by clouds and I did not have a map of the area. So that we wouldn’t “be alarmed,” our leaders just didn’t mention there was an active volcano nearby. They attributed the few booms we heard to a cannon at the local monastery. I’ve since come to learn that there is no monastery, and there definitely aren’t any cannons in the area.

After traveling south on the Pan-American Highway for about three hours, the bus turned east and started heading down to the jungle. I’m not sure if Baños is technically located in the Sierra, but it’s not really in the jungle. It’s kind of in between. It is a “cloud forest” area, meaning it is very lush and green. It is located along the Pastaza river and is bordered by steep hills on all sides. It is at about 6,000 feet whereas our apartment in Quito is at almost 9,000 feet. It was a bit easier to breathe there….but I get ahead of myself.

After turning east, we noticed a very odd cloud formation. It reached much higher than the other clouds, and it was much poofier than the flatter clouds that surrounded it. At first we attributed it to mountain weather patterns that we’re just getting accustomed to. As we neared our destination it became obvious that the clouds were columns of ash spewing from the volcano. Our bus was one of the few moving vehicles on the road; everyone else was stopped along the side to gawk at the show. Curiosity or amazement eventually overcame the driver and we did stop briefly to watch as boulders were hurled into the air for an unimaginable distance. We were treated to a crystal clear and unobstructed view of the proceedings. Without knowing anything of what daily life was like in that valley, we knew right away that this was something out of the ordinary. Once we were settled in our hostel we headed straight back to the main road to watch the show. Night had fallen by this time and the top of the volcano glowed an ominous red.

The display that night was just the opener. While the views were restricted by cloud cover
for the rest of the weekend, the volcano did not rest. Several nearby towns on the west and south sides of the volcano were devastated by the ash fall and the volcano produced four separate lava flows that scarred the landscape. Hundreds of people were evacuated. While no people died, the crops have been devastated and the livestock that was not taken out has all died as well. The current President has offered aid to these people whose lives have been destroyed, but we will see if that promise is actually followed through. The next presidential election is in October, so this could easily become a hot issue.

After watching the lava explode from the cone for an hour or so, we headed off to bed. We were woken up several times by explosions that shook our windows and sometimes our bed.

The next morning, we woke up to a very dreary, gray landscape. Throughout the morning, it was kind of like walking around in a cloud as mist accumulated on everything. Later in the day, it actually started raining. We lounged around most of the day, eating tasty food and reading interesting books. Later in the afternoon, we went on a “hike” up a very long set of stairs, 654 steps in all, to a statue of the Virgin. Every town down here seems to have a large statue of some variety of the Virgin on the hill above them. It was a nice little hike that got the blood moving and got us excited about hiking more.

The weather was much better on Sunday. While still a bit overcast, it had stopped raining. Since the view of the volcano was obstructed, we decided to rent bikes for the day and go explore. Like any good tourist town should be, Baños is set up well for cyclists. As you walk through town, every other shop rents bikes. There is an easy (mostly downhill) ride along the main road which has amazing scenery and great waterfalls (random waterfall pic from the ride to the right). Since I had not ridden since my little accident at Nationals, I was a bit hesitant but the road was newly paved and shouldn’t offer many obstacles. Plus I really wanted to ride again!

After searching the town for bikes with decent brakes, we finally rented two GT mountain bikes of decent quality. They shifted and stopped – what more can one ask for from a $5 rental? We headed down the road and stopped every so often to see the amazing views.

About 25K in, we came to Rio Verde, home of the Pailon del Diablo waterfall. It is just huge and powerful. It was really flowing from the rains the day before. The falls are actually private property which provides a healthy income to the family that owns the land. The waterfall has two distinct sections. The lower falls are free and can be viewed from a swing bridge after hiking down into the valley. The upper falls aren’t visible until after paying a one dollar entry fee. Viewing the upper falls is something of a rush. They have built up an extensive walkway system that lets visitors get within a few feet of the raging waters. Thankfully they provide rain ponchos.

We continued down the road about 10K to the town on Rio Negro, at which point we decided it was starting to get late and we should try to get a bus back. We saw a sign for a piscina natural, natural pool, so we went to check it out. A bit off the main road, there was a tributary flowing in to the main river where 20+ locals were out for an afternoon swim. We decided to pass, as wet chamois on the bus ride home sounded a bit uncomfortable. The river at this point was wide and deep, surrounded by more jungle than mountains. The river was beginning to feel like the Amazon. We caught a bus back without any problems. $3 and a half hour later we were back in Baños.

It was about 5pm at this point. It didn’t get dark until 6:30-ish and the bikes weren’t due back until 8pm, so we decided to explore around Baños a bit more. The sky had cleared a bit, so we thought we might try to get a view of the volcano by bike. Across the river from Baños there is another large hill. The top of this hill is where all the local truck owners had been taking tourists to see the fireworks show for the past couple of nights. While we didn’t think we had time to ride all the way up, we decided to give it a try to at least make it up halfway for a better view.

As we crossed the bridge and started to make our way up, I made a joke about how far we would get before tipping over; it was a pretty steep gradient, cobbled for the first ½ mile and then packed dirt/gravel. As it turned out, not far. I bailed before I tipped out of fear of landing on the collarbone again. Ben made it quite a bit further, but he still only made it through the first few switchbacks. At this point, we had ridden around to the backside of the mountain and we didn’t know how much further we had to go to come around to the front, and the view of Tungurahua, again. After walking a bit and taking a hit off the asthma inhaler, the path flattened out a bit and we were able to start riding again. Taking it a few switchbacks at a time, we made our way up slowly.

Around 5:45, we had decided to turn around after two more switchbacks with or without the view. As we started to climb again, a friendly face popped out of a passing jeep. She was a retired American from Oregon who had worked for Shell and was now living in Baños. She owned a house on the top of this mountain we were trying to climb and was on her way there now. Would we like a ride to the top? Heck yes we would!

She informed us that we had climbed about 1/3 of the way up and there were 15 more switchbacks before the top. It took an Ecuadorian (translation – someone used to the altitude and probably in better shape than us) about 3 hours to climb the path on foot. Sure, our bikes were a bit faster, but not by enough as were trying to spin the granny gear and it was getting close to sunset.

She dropped us at the top before turning into her house and we were treated to an amazing view of Tungurahua. While the pictures didn’t turn out that well due to light conditions, we could see the smoke barreling out of the cone. The vibrations from the volcano were pretty much constant up there too. Baños, sitting in the valley, seemed to be protected from the vibrations from the majority of explosions and the general rumbling.

It was starting to get dark, so we had to leave pretty quickly. Thankfully we had brought along our headlamps, so we strapped those on, tossed on our jackets, and prepared to descend. It was at this point that I finally realized what I was about to do: we basically had to bomb back down to town. I’m not a great descender. I’ve ridden a mountain bike three times. My collarbone is still technically broken. Holy predicament batman!

It turned out to be fine. Actually, it turned out to be quite fun. No time like the present to figure out some new skills! I told Ben to go and he bombed the heck out of that mountain, leaving me in the dust to figure out what the heck I was doing. Of course he waited every so often to make sure I was doing all right. Rattled the heck out of myself, but it was a blast and we both made it down in one piece. A quick check of the watch at the bottom revealed that we had both just done the first 25 minute mountain bike descents of our lives. And the stainless steel collarbone held up just fine. Exhilarating!

That night, we had some amazing beans and rice at Casa Hood, a super cool gringo restaurant. We hung out for happy hour for a bit and made some friends. A group of musicians came in to the restaurant and we were treated to some live traditional Andean music. Great group, with some amazing talent.

Whether fortunate or not, we still don’t have jobs so we made it a long weekend and spent Monday morning in the famous baths of volcanically warmed mineral water. Just what our tired bodies needed. We met a guy from California who had been traveling through South America for the last six months. Got a few good recommendations from him about Peru and Argentina, but most interestingly we got a description a side of the volcano we couldn’t see from town. He had come in by bus on the same route as us, but on Saturday night. From the bus, he saw the lava flows streaming down the west side of the volcano.

The trip back to Quito was uneventful but did give us another chance to stare at the volcano and see where the lava flows had gone. After we left Tungurahua behind, we settled in for the standard bus ride, complete with the bad American movie dubbed in Spanish – 2 Fast, 2 Furious. We popped on the headphones and did our best to ignore this gem of American cinema as the bus whisked us back to our apartment in Quito.