Baños, Ecuador: Fuck It.

Photo Credit

He stands a lean 6 feet tall.  His dirty-blond hair is stringy, and hangs down almost into his eyes.  He is vaguely middle-aged.  His jeans are faded and stained, and his wispy, sun-bleached t-shirt could easily be from 1990.  He is missing his top left eye tooth, and quite possibly a few others behind it.  His worn, scratchy hands smell like cigarettes.  I am in Baños at Stay in Touch and this, dear readers, is my massage therapist.  When initially regarding him and looking at the price list, a part of me was hesitant.  Baños has no shortage of affordable massages, and I could have easily moved on.  But fuck it, I know that this is a good place, and why am I hung up on gender norms anyway?  I went for it, and let me tell you, it was wonderful.  One of the best massages of my life.  This decision-making process would set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

The Swing at the End of the World
Photo Credit

Geothermic activity has blessed this area with many natural hot springs.  Its location at the edge of the rain forest has given rise to an adventure sports reputation, including hiking, biking, horseback riding, canyoning, bridge jumping (video below by Eric Higginson), and of course the famous Swing at the End of the World.  For international backpackers, it is often a Spanish immersion opportunity.  But whatever the purpose of the traveler, the town should really develop some kind of slogan that cleverly embodies its niche in the tourism market.  I propose the following:

Baños, Ecuador: Fuck It.  

Crude, yes (and in need of a graphic design team), but it really does encapsulate the attitude that one should bring with them to a city such as this.  First off, it lies at the base of Tungurahua, an incredibly active volcano towards the jungle side of the country.  Standing just over 5,000 m/16,400 ft, it is a drawing of a volcano that a child would make; slowly puffing ash, and looking completely at home as the backdrop to a herd of Brontosaurs.  Whoever the first people were who stopped here and started building their homes without a doubt themselves said, "Eh, fuck it.  Feel how warm this water is!"  At least we can hope for their sake that their language contained such a nuanced yet versatile phrase.   Even the people who go there now, myself included, have likely ignored sternly worded urgings to steer clear of this region from their countries' embassies.  But fuck it, seriously, feel how warm this water is!

This town is so laid back, you can
even nap while Canyoning.  Photo
courtesy of Eric Higginson.

Getting to Baños from Quito is straightforward.  Get a taxi or take the Trole to the Quitumbe bus terminal in the South.  A taxi from the north of the city where I live costs about $8, or the Trole costs $0.25 from and to anywhere.  The Trole gets crowded sometimes and you have to watch your stuff pretty keenly, so fuck it, I took the taxi.  Baños is a pretty popular destination, so buses tend to leave from the terminal every 30-45 minutes, at least on weekends and holidays.  After a 3.5 hour bus ride, you're there.  Baños is not big at all...almost everything is a 10-15 minute walk.  Some really nice places I've stayed at are La Posada del Arte and Plantas y Blanco.  There are plenty of cheaper options as well, all the way down to $5 for a room.  You do get what you pay for, though, which may or may not be a broom closet.  For fans of Harry Potter, it might be fun.

"Still beats sharing a dorm!"
Photo Credit

There is definitely an energy to this town, both from the location itself and from the people who go there from all over the world.  It is an easy place to enjoy whether you go with friends or travel solo, which is what I decided to do for the long weekend this past Semana Santa.  This is one of those old favorites I was talking about in a previous post, and the photos and video in this post reflect the many trips I have taken here (as well as my well-honed ability to applicably reference Harry Potter at will).

Photo courtesy of Eric Higginson.

Having already been adventuring here, I decided that this time I would just relax.  This was not a plan as much as it was a lack of one, and apparently, this mindset seems to seat me at a bar.  If like me you're a fan of micro-brews and are living in a country that isn't, you will be glad to find The Stray Dog.  When I arrived in Baños at around 6:00 Thursday evening, I dropped off my bag at my hostel, and went immediately to my date with an IPA.  Sure, it's 8% alcohol and I hadn't eaten in 6 or 7 hours, but fuck it, I wanted a beer.  The owners are from Chicago, so predictably they do have some decent pub food as well, including an imitation Wendy's cheeseburger, square patty and all.

Joseline and Stacy at the Stray Dog

For anyone who has traveled alone, you know that you invariably make some new friends.  These friendships are no less significant because of their brevity, and with social media now, some may even transcend the trip.  Anyway, my first friends of the weekend were found at the Stray Dog almost as quickly as that first, hoppy beer was satisfyingly settling into my stomach and blood stream.  There was Freddy, a guy from London whose trip to South America seemed to be doubling in length, and Stacy and Joseline, a couple from Houston who were in town for the weekend.  We all left the Stray Dog together, and found our way to some live music, where Freddy joined in on the bongo drums, and then to Leprechaun Bar, which is of course the standard final destination for revelers in Baños .

Free shot upon entry at Leprechaun.  Three out of four
backpackers recommend it!  Photo courtesy of Eric
Higginson.

Well, I shouldn't say final...the bars shut down at 2 am, but then there are after parties as well.  I have found my way to two of these in my visits to Baños, and both have provided the "fuck it" counterpoint; or at least the need for this attitude to be tempered at times.  The first found me sitting in a circle of what seemed to be a living room but was probably a hostel, with what had to have been the majority of the collective bar-tending staff of the town.  As I sipped on my beer, carried on strange conversations, and wondered what I was doing there, I would be periodically hushed as the cops drove by outside.  I felt like I was a teenager again.  In a bad way.  This past time involved scaling a ladder over the outside wall of a hostel and finding myself in a heated pool in my boxers on the other side.  Admittedly, that one should have been cooler, but it wasn't.  Both found me wandering home at about 5 am, really upset with my choices and about how much of tomorrow would now have to be slept away.  I was reminded of my friend Andrew Watkins, who likes to relate to his friends in Quito the three guidelines he was given by his dad when he was younger.  I can only reliably remember two, either because I disagree with the third, or because I so consistently disregard it that it's embarrassing to think about.

The menu at Quilombo
(Photo by Eric Higginson)

1) No shots.
2) Nothing good starts after 2 am.

Whoops.  These serve as good boundaries for the "fuck it" framework, and I did better at heeding them the following day.  I met up with Stacy and Joseline again and went to Quilombo, an Argentinian steak house, for dinner.  Being Texans, it seemed an appropriate place to take my new friends, as it has long been my favorite restaurant there.  With bellies full of steak and Malbec, we staggered back outside into the cool, drizzly night, and found that the weekend crowds had really arrived.  There were now cover charges for the bars, which we found silly and annoying, and we walked off of the main strip in search of something more low key.

New club in town...get there at 10 pm
for the VIP treatment.  

Here, not 15 steps into our search, we were approached by a woman promoting a new bar/nightclub.  The three of us briefly made eye contact, shrugged, and started following this woman to her bar.  Fuck it.  We walked, and kept walking, until there was no one else around and our internal alarms began to blare.  Baños is a safe town (if you don't count the active volcano), but we were now pretty isolated, and feeling a bit like the wildebeest that had been separated from the herd.  We made a few jokes with each other about this, and with our guide, and were just about to say fuck this, when we saw the sign for our destination.  Relieved, and feeling a bit silly about our paranoia, we went inside, and there was a DJ, a stage, a massive dance floor, a 2nd level with pool tables and balconies...and a total of four other people.  Ha!  Fuck it.  We got drinks, the other four people actually left, and for the next hour, Stacy, Joseline, and I enjoyed having the club to ourselves, with our own personal DJ and a fully staffed bar to tend to us.

The club, we would later learn, was an after hours spot.  No one bothered to tell us, but we didn't really care.  Its location on the outside of town was purposeful, so that they didn't have to abide by the 2 am closing rule.  "But Andy," you may be thinking, "didn't you say that you did better at following the rules this time?"  Of course I did!  Nothing good starts after 2 am.  I was already there;)  This is not a loophole, but rather a subtle and significant distinction; it's the difference between riding a wave and graspingly trying to catch one.  At night.  In a puddle.  At the foundation, one is based on the continuation of a joy, and the other a kind of sad but hopeful desperation, as if through the brute force of your own will, the world might be a little kinder to you.  "There will be something good around this next corner.  I deserve it."  This is a silly, illogical, and fatalistic delusion, and one that reverses who can be kinder to whom.  As you may surmise, I have fallen into this trap a time or two.

As it got later and more people began to show up, we ran into our old pal Freddy once again, and I made my final weekend friends in Leah and her merry band of volunteers, who were teaching in the small nearby town of Salasaka.  It was in talking with Leah that the theme for the town was coined.  Among the troupe of do-gooders was a fire-twirler and several musicians, all of whom I met up with again on my last full day there, as they were filming a video for their band.

Pilgrims lining the far side of the street by my hostel

One of the more interesting coincidences about this weekend is that there was a yearly pilgrimage for Easter from Ambato to Baños, ending at La Cascada de la Virgen.  The Virgin Waterfall.  The trek is 35 km long and made on foot.  Pilgrims often get to Baños in the middle of the night, and will sleep on the street until mass in the morning.  I had no clue that this was a thing until pilgrims began lying down on the sidewalks, passing around food and drink, and ultimately curling up under their blankets.

This trip was only four days long, but it so effectively disrupted my routines, forcing me to live in the moment, that when I got back to my apartment in Quito, I felt that I had been gone for weeks.  This was sorely needed, as I haven't been a fan of my routines of late.  This took me by the shoulders, shook me violently, and let a few of my more needless tendencies fall to the floor to be forgotten.  Fuck'em.

I felt very strongly pulled towards this place this weekend, regardless of whether or not it meant going alone.  As it turns out, a lot of people were drawn there.  I have always seen it as an escape; a chance to get away for a little while.  But maybe, as with the pilgrims, it has been less about what I leave behind, and more about what I find there. And so goodbye Baños, you are not just a vacation spot, you are my happy place.  I will miss you most of all.