Baños: Big Mountains, Bad Planning, Brilliant Weekend

I am not, by nature, an impulsive man. My wife operates on a different frequency. So when she appeared one evening with her phone held out like evidence, I listened. A Facebook ad from a local tour company: three days and two nights in Baños de Agua Santa Ecuador for a hundred and fifty dollars. I looked at the calendar, looked at the price, and said yes.

Three days later, eight of us were on a bus.

My better half had spent two days deploying her considerable social talents. The result: Kevin and Doris, Roger and Ramona, and Roger’s brother Dennis with his wife Brenda. All familiar with each other. All game for an adventure. If you’ve thought about whether group travel is worth the coordination, this was one of those trips that makes the case clearly. We got into the same dynamic in Roatan’s Roads, Rain, and Revelations.

The Bus to Baños Missed the Meal Stops

We believed we were in for an eight-hour ride. The actual number was twelve. The bus made an impressive number of stops, many of them stretching past thirty minutes, none of them involving food. Good thing we’d packed snacks, because the tour company hadn’t considered that humans require sustenance during half a day of travel.

We also believed we’d be checking into the hotel first, getting some sleep, and then heading to Chimborazo the following morning. Instead, the bus drove directly to the volcano. No detour. No warning. Without coffee.

At seven in the morning, our group stepped off the bus at four thousand eight hundred metres above sea level. The temperature was nine degrees Celsius. We were in shorts and t-shirts. Not our finest planning moment.

Chimborazo and the Art of Not Breathing

From the slopes of Chimborazo, you can see Carihuairazo, another volcano just nine kilometres away in Ecuador’s Avenue of Volcanoes. The early morning sky at that altitude is something particular. Clear and hard and very wide open, with the Andes spread out around you in a way that makes everything else feel smaller.

What altitude does to a person doesn’t introduce itself politely. The first thing I noticed was a mild wobble when I started walking. Not quite dizziness. More like the feeling of a couple of beers on an empty stomach, which, given the twelve-hour ride and no food, was at least relatable. Then came the breathing. Every step up the slope required negotiation. Nobody jogged. Everyone trudged, stopping regularly to convince their lungs to cooperate.

The headache arrived shortly after. Steady and dull, parked behind the eyes, a continuous reminder that normal conditions were a long way down the mountain. Several in the group added nausea to the mix. I won’t elaborate, but the rocky slopes of Chimborazo offered only limited privacy.

The missus and I were mostly spared. The altitude still had opinions about our breathing, but we made it to the facilities without major incident.

What we did wrong: everything in the wrong order. The right approach is to spend time in Baños first, acclimatizing at its lower elevation before driving up to the volcano. Proper cold-weather gear helps considerably. Coca tea, commonly available at high-altitude sites in Ecuador, is worth seeking out. We had none of these things. What we had was snacks and misplaced confidence. I’ve written about doing proper trip research here. We did not take our own advice.

None of that diminishes the experience. Standing on those slopes is the kind of thing that stays with you. Already planning a return, and thinking about the hundred and five dormant, extinct, and active volcanoes spread across Ecuador and into the Galapagos. There is a lot more of this country to see.

Baños de Agua Santa: The Hostel Reality

Back on the bus and down the mountain, we finally reached Baños de Agua Santa and our accommodation. The listing had said hotel. The reality was a hostel near downtown. The rooms were private. The bathrooms were private. The beds existed. After a twelve-hour bus ride and a morning on a volcano in shorts, that’s all you actually need.

Hot water turned out to be a limited resource. My travel companion and I each managed one hot shower during the stay. Roger and Ramona never did. This felt like a peculiar oversight for a city whose entire identity is built around bathing in hot water. Baños de Agua Santa translates as Baths of Holy Water. The hostel had not received the memo.

The tour company was offering a night-time party bus excursion at nine PM. Not one of the eight of us considered it. We showered, changed, and walked downtown. The women browsed the shops. The men investigated bars and restaurants. This is called reconnaissance and is a legitimate travel strategy.

Sher E Punjab: Best Find in Baños

Dennis had a contact who knew Baños well and had one specific recommendation: an Indian restaurant called Sher E Punjab. This seemed improbable. It was exactly right.

It was Roger and Ramona’s seventh anniversary that evening, and Sher E Punjab is where we celebrated it. Authentic food, excellent variety, cold beer throughout, and the sort of meal that makes it onto your permanent reference list. Genuine recommendation, without reservation.

The Beer Garden and Its Unusual Entrance

We found a bar afterward called the Beer Garden. Reaching it required entering a neighbouring establishment, climbing to the second floor, and crossing over through an adjoining doorway into the bar itself. Only in Ecuador.

The balcony looked out over the street. Service was attentive. The IPA was excellent. The music was loud enough that conversation required some volume. It was also expensive by local standards. We had one round and called it a night, which was the correct decision.

The Best Five-Dollar Tour in Baños

The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast at a downtown steakhouse, the group made a collective decision. Skip the tour company’s excursions entirely. Instead, we walked to Chebas Tours, a local operator, and paid five dollars per person for a three-hour open-air double decker bus tour of Baños and the surrounding valley. Warm day. Sunny. Our guide was a man named Sebastian, who spoke enough English to be genuinely useful and enough enthusiasm to make the whole thing entertaining. Highly recommended — find Sebastian, book the tour, and thank me later.

This is the activity recommendation for anyone visiting Baños: do this tour. Stops included a suspension bridge and ziplines over Pastaza Canyon, a tarabita (cable car) crossing of the Pastaza River at San Carlos, a candy factory producing sweets from guava, and finally Pailón del Diablo. The Devil’s Cauldron drops roughly eighty metres down sheer rock into a basalt basin, surrounded by cloud forest, hanging bridges, and dramatic viewpoints. One of Ecuador’s most powerful waterfalls, about twenty minutes from Baños. Five dollars. Worth considerably more.

Baños Hot Springs and the Kevin Problem

After two days of rationed showers in a city named for its healing waters, we figured we’d better actually go find some. The mineral-rich hot springs around Baños carry a long reputation for restorative properties. We changed and walked down.

The experience was fine. The water felt genuinely good once you got past the sulphur smell, which is present and noticeable. The pools were busy with locals who were mildly unimpressed by the arrival of eight tourists. There were also rules we hadn’t fully anticipated.

Swim caps are mandatory. A local shopkeeper had mentioned this the day before, so we were prepared. Proper swimwear is also required. Kevin had arrived in boxer shorts and was turned away at the entrance. He handled this with impressive composure and went back downtown. She Who Must Be Obeyed and I soaked for about an hour, then showered and hailed a cab. Kevin was only five minutes behind us.

A few cold beers in the hostel common area, all eight of us together. Then we followed Kevin to the Argentinian steakhouse he’d spotted earlier.

The Steak That Closed Out Baños

My T-bone was twenty-one ounces. It arrived perfectly cooked and tasted like something designed to justify the previous thirty-six hours. Kevin’s Tomahawk was thirty ounces and drew the admiration it deserved. Doris and Roger got in on the steaks as well. The wife had ribs. Dennis and Brenda had ribs. Ramona had chicken. The food was exceptional across the board, and the prices were genuinely remarkable. Tina’s ribs and my T-bone came to forty-five dollars between us. That’s not a typo.

We wandered afterward. The women made a final pass through the shops. The men located a quiet sidewalk bar with two tables, almost no foot traffic, and no competing music. Doris and I shared a bottle of wine. Cuba Libres and cold beer sorted out the rest of the group. My wife had a cappuccino and looked satisfied. Always a good sign.

Somewhere during that last drink, a motion passed to charter a local van home rather than reboard the twelve-hour bus. We found our man: Rolando, a local driver who got all eight of us loaded up and moving without fuss. The next morning we left Baños at nine-thirty and arrived home in ten hours. An improvement by every measure.

The Point of All of This

The point of Baños de Agua Santa Ecuador wasn’t careful planning. It was the going. We spotted an ad, we booked it, and three days later we had altitude symptoms, waterfall views, an anniversary dinner worth remembering, and a T-bone that has been mentioned more times since than any meal deserves. No months of research. No transatlantic connections. A fraction of what a larger trip costs, and stories that keep being told.

If you’ve been thinking about what a spontaneous, budget-friendly adventure looks like, we made that same case in Belize: Broken Bridges, Brews, and Bliss. And when you’re ready to plan Ecuador properly, with the right gear, the right sequence, and the volcano visited after acclimatizing rather than before, the team at Boarding Pass Travel can help put something worthwhile together. Some trips benefit from guidance. Especially the ones at 4800 metres.

Baños will be on the list again. With warmer clothes next time.