Baños: part 1

I was in Baños for the weekend. It´s about 4 hours south of Quito by bus, and it is the ultimate tourist town! I have never been anywhere more touristy in my life! There are probably 8000 inhabitants in this town, and I would say that a great majority of them exist solely for the tourists. In the main streets, every second building is a hostel/hotel, and the other buildings are tour operators. They all offer the same things- horse riding, quad biking, white water rafting, canyoning, bicycle hire, mountain climbing and trekking. The trekking varies from operator to operator, and you can go to the jungle or to the mountains. Most offer visits to the Quichua and/or Shuar Indigenous villages (how exotic!). Quichua is the other major language in Ecuador, they´re the predominant Indigenous peoples.

Baños is really different from Quito. For one thing, the streets are actually clean! The buildings in the main tourist streets are really colourful, clean and generally attractive. But once you move away from the tourist area (even a few streets away), the houses and buildings start looking a bit shabby and drab.

Here´s some street vendors, selling random touristy stuff (in the tourist strip)

And this is outside the tourist strip (about 2 streets away). The houses are more ´normal´ looking here (normal for Ecuador).

Baños is so touristy there´s even several of these train thingys running around town. I was surprised to see one, let alone three! The other ones were Flintstones and a strange caterpillar.

Ok, I´m going to create another post, lest this one gets too long and cumbersome.