Rom Pon Pon - Baños, Ecuador

It's full name, Baños de Agua Santa (Bath of Holy Water), is the adventure town of Ecuador. As the name suggests, it's full of rivers and crashing waterfalls. Some travellers we’ve spoken to who are wizzing their way through South America, much like us, chose to miss out Ecuador. For us, when we first started dreaming up our round the world plan, an image we’d seen 1000 times was the famous waterfall of Pailon del Diablo, situated in Baños.. A four hour bus ride from Quito and we were dropped off in the busy little town full of young travellers looking for a thrill. 

Our first stop, of course, was Pailon del Diablo waterfall (the devils cauldron), this was what we came to Ecuador for and it was so worth it! For $2 p/p you enter the start of the falls, a walk through food and gift stalls, even a medicinal store selling what I presumed was a dead snake in vodka, probably a cure for baldness or something like that. As we make our way down, firstly, you hear the falls, the roar of the water is indescribable, next comes the view, a glimpse of the thrashing water cascading down the rock, and last comes the spray, close enough to drink it if you like! We walked down the stairs delicately carved in to the rock, then on hands and knees made our way through a tiny crawl space which leads you to directly behind the falls, each viewing point gives you a different appreciation of the size. Everything about it was awesome. We walked back through the town and found the second entrance, for another $2p/p you can see the falls from above, again we made our way to behind the falls and even managed to get soaked by filling up our empty bottles, but we had a whale of a time while doing it.

Banos is also known for its natural hotsprings, heated by the nearbye Volcano Tungurahua. The most commonly visited springs are situated just on the edge of town, Termas de la Virgin. The Cascada de la Virgen waterfall is seen from nearly everywhere in Banos, we were lucky enough to have a view of this from our hostel room at Hostel Chimenea. The waterfall feeds the freezing cold shower which falls out from the rock, all part of the hot/cold mixture of these baths. We went after it had reopened after cleaning on an evening, a very busy time to go. We were crammed in with the locals, but the range of 17 - 55 degree heat and a view of the waterfall falling down beside you was well worth it, even with a touch of rain. 

Our last day was a bit of an anticlimax. We headed for Casa del Arbol - the swing at the end of the world. We had a light drizzle once we left the town, but as the bus headed up through the winding hills the rain got heavier. We made it to the famous treehouse with what we hoped would offer us the best views of the valley, unfortunately the rain and fog dampened the view. We still waited our turn, got soaked in the que and had our time on the swing, worth it for the gram hey! 

In summary, we loved Banos! There’s much more we could have done from bungee jumping to renting quad bikes, but being tight on time (and money) we kept it basic. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the title - Rom Pon Pon - what we hoped would be an Amaretto type liquor turned out to be more of a peach schnapps, not the nicest with coke, but it took us right back to pre drinks in Preston in our uni days. I’m sure there will be many more tales of where our Spanish will fail us.

S&J