Fargo Brook Times, Andean Edition: Field Trip: Baños de Agua Santa, Tungurahua

We are tourists here. Pretty much always, and in every context, I feel like a tourist. A short-timer. I wonder when the first white people in the Americas stopped feeling like this. Probably didn't take long, given the proprietary tendencies of Europeans during the Age of Exploration.

Spanish monks showed up in central Ecuador in 15 thirty-something, eager to sway heathens to their culture and religion. Maybe they'd find a little gold, too, who knows? Looking at the steep walls of hills surrounding this undeniably picturesque town, I can't help thinking that those monks were changed by this place, too -- in spite of themselves and their church.

A nexus between the high Andes and the Amazon Basin, Baños de Agua Santa, or just plain Baños as it's called in Ecuador, turned out to be a great launching point for their holy endeavors. They built a church here, The Church of the Virgin of the Holy Water, and thanks to earthquakes and the massive Volcán Tungurahua (Throat of Fire, in Kichwa), people have rebuilt it a few times since. They also built the now famous pools to catch volcano-fired waters, hence the name Baños.

"And there's that ridge between us and the volcano," said Jim, an understated Chicago ex-pat, owner of our hostel, and not-so-coincidentally the first brew pub I have entered in six months. "Personally, I have more faith in the ridge, but it's nice to have both."

The Agua Santa, or holy water, comes from the belief that the town is intimate with Nuestra Señora, the Virgin Mary. She is supposed to have once materialized near a waterfall (from then on called La Cascada de la Virgen de Agua Santa, obviously). She protects the town from the constant threat of the very active Volcán Tungurahua. And you can buy the holy water by the gallon. At the gift shop, you buy your milk-jug-looking jug with a sticker of Our Lady on the front, radiating pacifically. We chose to bathe in those waters instead, four bucks for adults and two for kids.

A statue of The Blessed Virgin was carved and placed in the church. The same church houses an eclectic museum of "artifacts" as well, including the robe a pope wore on his visit here, a creepy shrunken head, a recent soccer trophy, and a bestiary of stuffed animals obviously not prepared by a professional taxidermist as evidenced by their impossible poses and improbable proportions. As for Our Lady of the Holy Waters, she is paraded out for holiday processions and celebrations, among them the retaking of the city in 1999.

Under the threat of an eruption, the 17,000 residents of Baños were evacuated from the city which was then barricaded by the national police. After some time, residents became fearful that the police were ransacking and looting their homes. Eschewing the main road, they took to the high mountain trace and broke through the line of police with shovels and hoes. (Ecuadorian hoes are intimidating, not your average garden variety.) One person was killed in the chaos.

Instead of bibles and hoes, we showed up with backpacks and rolling suitcases. We took the opportunity of my parents' visit to check out Baños and spent a few days doing the tourist thing in this very touristy city. In fact, I think this is Baños' strength and weakness at the same time -- pretty much the paradox of popular destinations all over the globe.

Walking through the center of Baños, a visitor is bombarded by tour options: canyoning, biking, puenting (bridge/bungee jumping), zip-lines, jungle day trips, and waterfall tours. You can even rent dune-buggies and zip noisily around the city in your two-stroke lawn mower powered car. Tempting, but we resisted.

We did not resist the waterfall tour though. On our last day, we sought out one of the chivas for a look at the many waterfalls in the area. It didn't take us more than four or five blocks to find an operator. The tour was actually already underway, so we waited for a guy to borrow a van, hustle us in, and catch up with the chiva.

A chiva is an open bus with benches. First used as transport for poor people in rural communities of Colombia, they're handy for waterfall tours as well. Our chiva -- as it seems is the case for most of them in Baños -- was splashed with many colors of paint, outfitted with disco lights, and hooked up to a club-sized sound-system that only blasted the latest salsa-techno at jet-plane decibels.

The tour winds downstream, along the Pastaza River, a truly stunning canyon emptying eventually into the Amazon. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, it's also crisscrossed by dozens of zip-lines and canopy cars. In true Ecuadorian fashion, one or two of something is not enough. Then again, as we toured on a popular Sunday ride, most of them were in use.

"We're gonna die… we're gonna die," Jack repeated over and over when we stepped into the car suspended from a cable, running from a 300' cliff to the valley below. A kid sat on top of a jury-rigged diesel engine, one hand on the lever that ran the winch. At a buck a person, we figured we'd give it a shot. Unlike some of the zip lines, this one was attached to more than one cable, two in fact.

The guy taking the money, closed the gate and put the pin into place to "secure" the door. The basket was big enough for my fear of heights, with the sides at Oakes' head level. It was pretty cool zipping past twin falls and down to the valley floor. We walked across a suspension bridge to the base of the falls where we could pay another dollar to walk up closer. This we declined self-righteously, loitered around the bridge a bit, and then headed back across to the cable car.

Checking out the various falls with the sound-system so forceful it was blowing Kerry's hair back, we continued bumping along, a rolling advertisement full of gawkers. We were the only gringoes on the tour, which to me is one of the cool things about Ecuador: Ecuadorians patronize all of the same tourism sites that gringoes do. Wealthier ones anyway.

On the admittedly self-indulgent plus side of built-up, tourism brings amenities, not least of which is the cuisine. The food was awesome -- pretty much everything we tried was great, particularly at our hostel, La Posada del Arte, particularly the fish tacos. Although we've kept our distance from Asian food outside of Quito, at one joint run by an Italian guy we tried Pad Thai for the first time on our year-long tour. It was very good, as well as voluminous -- two things I like in a dish.

It was a nice stay in a beautiful place. We would have loved to explore the surrounding hills and gorges more, though Kerry and I agreed it was a relief to return to our temporary home in Otavalo. Maybe it's because we have a comfortable base and we know this place. Maybe it's because Otavalo is four or five times bigger than Baños, and most of the neighborhood tourists and ex-pats are either absorbed like us or live over in Cotacachi. But for me, Kerry put her finger on it: "Everyone's hustling something in Baños." It gets a bit old after a while. Of course, as any tourist does with only a couple of days, we only skimmed the surface of the agua santa.

*****

As always, the pictures look better as a slide show -- click on one to start it. Thanks for looking!