If one is in Quito and wants to go to the backpackers' destination spot, Baños Agua Santa at the foot of the very active Tungurahua Volcano in central Ecuador, the best option is to take a bus. This would be our first long haul bus experience in South America so we didn't know exactly what to expect, but the day couldn't have gone more smoothly for us! Hoping that all future bus rides will be the same...yea right.
From Old Town Quito, it cost $7.50 (including the 50 cent entrance fee at the bus station) via taxicab that took approximately 30 minutes. Ask for the Quitumbe bus station. Once at the bus station, the taxi has to take a ticket that costs 50 cents to get out, which we gladly paid for. Or, you can be dropped off farther away without paying the 50 cent entrance fee. Quitumbe bus station is VERY NICE! Nicer than many airports I've seen.
There are many, many express buses that leave this station so once in the terminal, we located the area that sells tickets going to Central Ecuador. We arrived at the ticket booth at 9:12am and apparently, a bus to Baños was leaving in 3 minutes so we quickly purchased our tickets that only cost $7.50 for the 2 of us, and we quickly boarded our bus. The bus was like a nice tour bus with comfortable seats. We chose the front row with more legroom to place our backpacks in front of us, as we didn't want to lose sight of our bags.
We intended to take a different 9:50am express bus that only stopped once or twice along the way, but the bus we got on was definitely not the express. It stopped at many locations, even stopping to let people off at random places off the side of the highway, as requested by the passengers! At each of the bus stops, food vendors would climb on board and sell their goods. We're not sure what this one guy was selling - DVDs maybe - but he stayed on board and we had to listen to his sales pitch while he played each of the DVDs very LOUDLY. That was pretty annoying, but he got off at the next stop. Once he got off, they showed a Latin movie on board that was apparently quite hilarious. From the looks of it, it was like a Latin version of Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" type humor. We were highly entertained by this whole experience and glad that we didn't take the express.
The PanAm Hwy was a decent ride without a lot of curvy roads. The scenery was beautiful, climbing high into the clouds until we felt like we could touch them. We saw lots of cows just hanging out by the side of the road, eating grass; dogs walking themselves; and pigs laying around in dirt.
Because there were so many random stops along the way, and no way to tell where we were, we became a little worried that we wouldn't be able to tell when we needed to get off in Baños. Alas, no worries. After a fairly steep descent into a valley and crossing a major river that you can't miss, we arrived at a real bus station off of Avenida Amazones, 4 hours later.
From there, our hostel was a 5 minute walk, as is the case with most hostels in Baños. The town isn't very big and it is very pedestrian friendly so that was a huge relief. We instantly felt good to be in a smaller, quaint town surrounded by nature. We will be relaxing here for the entire week, enjoying the hot spring baths, hiking in the mountains, viewing the volcano and all the waterfalls in the area.
