Baños and the upper Amazon basin

I left Cuenca on Wednesday evening and arrived here, in Baños, on Thursday morning. Baños is a tourist hotspot, popular with both Ecuadorians and foreigners, due to its idyllic location in the central highlands. It´s name literally means `baths´ - it is named after several nearby hotsprings. Baños sits in the shadow of the huge and humbling Tungurahua volcano, which gave the town some trouble in 1999 when it decided to erupt after years of dormancy. This seriously damaged the tourist business here, as all the locals had to move out for some months, but the town seems to have recovered. Even now, seven years on, there is clear evidence of the lahars caused by the eruption. This is Tungurahua (hovering over images will give you some extra descriptions):



On Thursday afternoon I walked up to Bellavista, an appropriately named building on a hill overlooking Baños. This was the beautiful view of the town that awaited me:



One of the main reasons I wanted to come to this area was to do the recommended bike ride from Baños down to Puyo. Puyo lies 60km by road to the east of Baños, and about 850m lower in altitude (Baños being at 1800m, Puyo at 950m). The setting of the two towns couldn´t be much more different. Travelling this relatively short distance takes you from the highlands, right down into the Amazon basin. Puyo is the gateway for the Oriente, basically the jungle area of Ecuador. The bike ride was amazing, and hard - there was more down than up but there was plenty of up! This is what the upper amazon basin looks like, on the road between the two towns:







The best part of the journey was the impressive Pailón de Diablo waterfalls near the village of Rio Verde. These falls were about 20km east of Baños, a short walk from the road, and are apparently one of the most impressive waterfalls in Ecuador. I walked right up to their base, and the noise from the water here was deafening. The force of the water crashing into the pool at the bottom sent rain flying upwards!



Near to the waterfall was an authentic jungle-style rickety bridge:



There were several other waterfalls en route, including several that dropped straight onto the road.



The whole journey to Puyo took about 4 hours, and the bus shamed me by climbing back up to Baños in only one hour. It was a very worthwhile journey. Today I plan on some serious hammock time, before catching a bus to Quito tomorrow.