A Giant Swing. Jungle Screaming. Ice Plunges. You’ll Love It.

Just a three-and-a-half hour drive from Ecuador’s capital, Quito, the town of Baños de Agua Santa snuggles into a deep valley surrounded by the mountains skirting the Tungurahua volcano. With an elevation of close to 6,000 feet and a population of around 15,000 residents, Baños has a bit of a ski town feel: The city slows down during the day while travelers are out doing activities, and picks up again in the evening when they come back for dinner. It’s a magnet for unshaven backpacker types taking a break from hiking the route around Ecuador’s volcanoes and craters. They often begin their Baños extension with a week of rest, which then becomes a month’s sojourn, but soon they buy a bike and adopt a street dog and, well, maybe that’s why all the foreigners in the cafes of Baños seem to know everyone else’s name. Baños is a comfortable home for a getaway artist.

But I arrived after dark and the town looked, frankly, depressing. A line of boarded-up clapboard shops selling tacky T-shirts lined the road in, and the central plazas were occupied only by the occasional dog. When I checked into my inn, the air in my room felt damp, and the mattress hard. I had heard through a long, winding grapevine that Baños was an outdoor lover’s paradise, but as I tossed and turned that first night I wondered if I had come all this way for nothing.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/travel/banos-ecuador-adventure.html?emc=rss&partner=rss