I’m writing this whilst trying to block out the squelches, screams and crunches of another horrifically violent, badly dubbed film being played to a bus load of families. Today, it’s a bus from Baños and I’m heading back to Quito.
As I had mentioned, I decided to opt out of running in Baños due to my gammy foot. I did however do a post-worthy hike up from Baños into the mountains above, to ‘the swing off the edge of the world’, locally known as ‘El Casa del Arbol’; ‘The Tree House’.
Baños is pleasantly cool compared to out last few stops, Guyaquil and Canoa. So a 3/4 hour hike into the mountains seemed pretty manageable. After fuelling up at breakfast I bought some treats for the journey and me and my mum and set off together.
The first stretch of the walk took us to Bellavista, the old South American favourite, a religious symbol overlooking a great view of the town. Baños has a large cross from which we enjoyed impressive views of the little town in the mountains, just below the clouds.
We met a Canadian family around here and walked with them for the rest of the way. The route took us up many muddy paths, through farm land and forest. There were lots of strange and interesting plants to take in, including these polka-dot trees.
After around 3 and a half hours walking we had made it up to El Casa del Arbol and paid our one dollar entrance fee. The area consisted of a field housing the treehouse and swings, a small zip wire and a restaurant. It in the middle of the clouds and we were unable to see the mountains and vast volcano which we knew surrounded us. We sat down for a choclo con queso for lunch and watched the other tourists going for the money shot on one of the two swings which fly out over the side of the mountain.
After our leisurely lunch, the clouds were beginning to lift and the surrounding mountains were peeking through. Mum had strict instructions as photographer and I took my turn at swinging ‘off the edge of the world’. I was happy we had hung around for a little while as the views from our vantage point at 2660m altitude were beautiful. We opted for a taxi ride back down to town, but only after I bought one of these giant seed pods for 50 cents. It’s called guaba and after breaking it open you eat the slightly furry white flesh which surrounds the big black seeds inside.
On descending into town, the festivities for New Years Eve were well under way. Many of the shops and homes outide had their effigies ready for burning at midnight. This tradition is called año viejo; old year, where celebrities and characters from the previous year are burned at midnight. Other traditions include men dressing up as women and stopping traffic for money, wearing yellow underwear for good luck, and lots of masks. The town was buzzing that night and complete with fox mask and yellow knickers, I partied like an Ecuadorian until the early hours.
rosarunningaway 