Cas­cada del Diablo

Located about 2 hours South East of Quito, Banos is Ecuador’s answer to those look­ing for a place where extreme sports and good hik­ing are musts in their trav­els. Despite what many travel guides and trav­el­ers say the town itself is not very attrac­tive, with lit­tle to offer culturally-wise except for the town church and… and that’s about it.

This said, Banos is a great place for hik­ing and moun­tain bik­ing. There are sev­eral paths to be fol­lowed start­ing at the town cen­ter, but the most pop­u­lar one is the Camino de las Cas­cadas (path of the water­falls). This is a down­hill ride along the main road that takes about 1.5 hours from which you will see four water­falls, the last being La Cas­cada del Dia­blo (the devil’s water­fall) which is the biggest and most fun. It does require a 10 minute walk from the park­ing lot and they charge 1 USD to see it from the top (which is actu­ally half way up).

Water­fall along the camino

The way back to Banos is another story, and you’ll have to be in some sort of good shape to accom­plish it. If you can’t or can’t be both­ered get a car lift for 3USD or stop a bus on the main road  for 25c. You should have no prob­lems car­ry­ing the bike in either of them, which costs about 5 USD for a day;if you are up for other activ­i­ties these include bungee jump­ing, paraglid­ing, raft­ing, buggy dri­ving, horse­back rid­ing and more.

All these activ­i­ties are easy to find in many other places, but in my opinon there is one thing that really makes Banos worth a stop: Tun­gu­rahua volcano.

Its activ­ity is very attrac­tive dur­ing the day, with clouds of smoke ris­ing into the sky and mak­ing itself eas­ily view­able from the dis­tance, but it is at night when you will see it bet­ter, with sev­eral options avail­able depend­ing on how close you want to be and how much money you want to pay (5−25 USD/ per­son). 5 USD takes you with a chiva to one of two spots: the top of the moun­tain in front of Banos, or the Cross on the hill over­look­ing the town. Make sure you choose the first option: it’s the one I chose (by chance) and on the way up I was rewarded with glimpses of lava flow­ing and rocks being spit in the dis­tance. Unfor­tu­nately once we reached the sum­mit clouds decided to get the front seat– and that was the end of the show. All we could do was lis­ten to the thun­der the moun­tain made, quite unique already.

The 25 USD tour takes you to the base of the crater with a 4WD, and you’re guar­an­teed not to come back to Banos until you have seen enough and have taken all the pic­tures you want.

Accom­mo­da­tion and food are quite cheap in Banos; it is easy to find a basic room with toi­let for around 6 USD and good almuer­zos start at around 1.5 USD, fresh juice included as usual. Depend­ing on how many activ­i­ties you want to par­tic­i­pate in two days is enough to see the vol­cano and the nat­ural attrac­tions in the area. It is com­mon for trav­el­ers to head to the jun­gle from here (via Puyo), but I took at 4am the only bus direct bus to Otavalo, where the most famous mar­ket of the coun­try would wel­come me 8 hours later.

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