Brett and Emily in South America: July 2010

Leaving Peru and Entering Ecuador Aguas Verdes

We arrived in Baños (de Agua Santa) in the early morning after a bit of a rough/interesting ride from Peru. The trip started when we arrived at the place where we booked our bus ticket (in Mancora, Peru) to Ecuador and the kind of sleezy guy told us our bus was canceled. But he told us not to worry because they got a van for us to the border with 10 other travelers and then someone who is going to go in the van with us will buy bus tickets for us to a city near Baños. Crossing the border at Aguas Verdes (Peru)/Huaquillas (Ecuador) was a bit reminiscent off Cuidad del Este, Paraguay. Both sides of the border was just a sea of activity, with just a small bridge connecting the two countries. Both countries have their passport formalities a few kilometers from the border so there is really not much security except a few policeman around for good measure. After walking from the bridge to where we needed to buy the tickets we had a bit of time to kill before our bus so Emily and I just walked around the town for a bit which seemed to be pretty lively at night. We got back to where our bus was leaving from and realized we should have stayed another night in Peru to wait for the nice bus (which would have been the same price and we had seen the day before leave). The Ecuadorian bus was a bit of a POS...no AC, first time pretty much in South America we had a movie in both Spanish with Spanish subtitles, and no service at all. The bus ride was sweltering hot and every time the bus stopped at one of numerous checkpoints or for an unneeded meal at 3am. Even the transportation in Bolivia I felt was better then this. We had to switch busses in the early morning in a town about two hours from Baños and finally arrived at our destination in the morning.

Baños City Square

As we only had really a day in town we couldn't really rest from our pretty crappy bus ride so we had to make due with the day we had in Baños and not take a break. Besides the city, the best thing to do in the area is to go on a 60 km path down the main road from the city to see an array of waterfalls. As we were pretty exhausted we decided to skip the cheaper bike option and instead rented a 2-person Dune Buggy. The road was a gorgeous view winding through a mountain valley with overlooks of waterfalls every few kilometers. We even passed over one bridge where people were doing a bungie swing over the valley river. At the end of the road there is suppose to be a small hike down to a gorgeous hidden waterfall. Well needless to say we kind of overshot the turnoff by about 20km. So once we realized we went to far I turned around and headed back until we figured out where it was. I didn't complain to much, even though in the end it made us have to pay a late fee on the Dune Buggy, because I just got to drive the Dune Buggy a bit more down some great dirt roads. We did the short hike and checkout the hidden waterfall enjoying a nice picnic lunch down at the end of the trail. We headed back up the trail (which seemed a bit longer the way back) and jumped back on the Dune Buggy and headed back in to town. We pulled in to town and returned the Dune Buggy, both us and the Dune Buggy were a bit more muddy then when we left, and headed back to the hostel.

Waterfall

Driving around in the Dune Buggy

Close up of me driving the Dune Buggy

The hidden waterfall

Emily on the bridge

Video 1 of driving the Dune Buggy (on gravel)

Video 2 of the Dune Buggy (on paved road)

We heard about a few other things to do in and around town including a couple of day trek in the Ecuadorian “Lakes District” and also a late evening campfire in the mountains near a semi-active volcano. We talked to the Israeli hostel owner who told us that the nighttime campfire really isn't that great and the volcano hadn't been active recently. So tending we were both exhausted and the bad review we just received, we decided to just hang around town for the night enjoying a nice Italian dinner in the town square and watched a small band play marching songs. We took the rest of the night easy just hanging out at the hostel with some Israelis and went to sleep. The next morning we knew we could head out almost every ten minutes to Quito so we enjoyed a great pancake breakfast at the hostel and went to the town square to buy some freshly made toffee. I had seen toffee made by the machines on the Jersey Shore before but this was literally handmade. A man had a large amount of taffy and was standing about 2 meters away from a hook that he kept swinging the toffee on stretching it out more and more. In reality the toffee ended being not that great (Jersey Shore Salt Water Taffy is much better) but it was the thing to buy in the town so we had to try it. We then headed to the bus station and on our way closer to the Equator in Quito.