11 Epic Things to Do in Baños, Ecuador
Baños, Ecuador is a bustling little town in the mountains with an endless variety of restaurants. Set in a crevice between high mountains, its the gateway to hot springs, waterfalls, volcano views and so much natural beauty. At the foot of a large active volcano, Baños has a lot of eco and adventure activities.
Initially, I only planned to spend 3 nights in Baños, because I was worried that there wasn’t enough to do there for young kids (my youngest child is 5.) But, we changed our dates to add a 4th night after doing some further reading. Not only am I glad that we had 4 nights in Baños, but we could have easily stayed a 5th! We explored waterfalls, went ziplining, hiking, soaked in hot springs and ate in lots of great restaurants. It was our favourite part of our trip to Ecuador.
I could see based on the other tourists in Baños that the town is a very popular getaway for Ecuadorian and other Latin American couples. There were also some solo travellers. But we found it to be an amazing place to visit if you’re in Ecuador with kids too. We were there with our teenager and kindergartener, both of whom really enjoyed our time in Baños as much as we did. Baños was overall our favourite place on our Ecuador itinerary, and its the one place (of all of the ones we visited) where we’d go back to spend the same amount of time. Can’t wait to show you below why we loved it so much!
Epic Things to Do in Baños, Ecuador
1. Go see the Pailón de Diablo waterfall
Paolin de Diablo waterfall is one of the top attractions in all of Ecuador. It’s the furthest waterfall along a group of waterfalls along the ‘Ruta de Cascadas’, but its also the most popular one. El Pailon de Diablo, meaning Devil’s Cauldron in English, is a 260-foot (80-metre) tall waterfall that you can get super close to (and get pretty drenched by.) Pailon de Diablo is the closest I’ve gotten to a waterfall so strong.
How long you spend here depends on which entrance you go into. There are two different entrances to El Pailon de Diablo that you need to choose between. We did the main entrance (ingresa principal) which is a bit of a hike to the waterfall and has some claustrophobic caves that you need to go through to get to it. Having said that, I thought it had the better views and we’re glad we did that one. It also gave us access to a suspension bridge and staircase, plus you can pratically go right under the cascades! You do get fairly wet, and we saw lots of people with ponchos.
The other entrance to El Pailon de Diablo is a much shorter walk to the cascades, but you can’t go underneath, and it doesn’t have access to the trails and the suspension bridge. If you don’t want to walk too much, or just want a quick visit, then the new entrance is the best one to go with. It also seemed to us that its the more common one for people to visit, there were more people on the viewing platform for the ingreso than there were on our side.
We didn’t wear ponchos, but we did bring a change of clothes for my youngest kid, and wore swimsuits underneath as we planned to go to a hot springs after. You do get quite wet at El Pailon de Diablo, regardless of which entrance you choose. And if you have a GoPro to take photos, that would be safer than filming with your phone.
There are many cafes here and vendor stalls selling cute and handmade Ecuadorian souvenirs, on both sides of the entrances. If you come in the evening, then El Pailon de Diablo is illuminated. I considered coming back to the waterfall in the evening, and going into the new entrance to see it at night, but we ran out of time.
2. Explore other waterfalls along the Ruta de Cascadas
El Pailon de Diablo is the last waterfall on what is called la ruta de cascadas in Banos. La Ruta de Cascadas a popular tourist route along a motorway that has several waterfalls just off the side of the road or close to it.
The route is 17 km in total, and its common to do it by bicycle but it can also be done by car, chivas (tourist bus) or a public bus. Cycling the route is doable for some, but its not the best option for families with young kids like us. Keep in mind that the waterfalls don’t need to be visited on a single visit, they can also be visited individually. We visited the waterfalls on different occasions from taking Ubers out there.
Another popular way to do it is via the chivas, which are a tourist bus that leaves from central Baños. The chivas that we saw were blaring loud music, so we didn’t want to take them. However, we hopped on public busses that stop along the route to take us back to Baños. There is a bus that goes back and forth from Banos town centre to El Pailon de Diable, and it was very cheap. We took an Uber out to some of the waterfalls, and then caught the bus on its way back to town. (I recommend keeping some change on you incase you need to do this – we had trouble getting Ubers to come back out to the area to pick us up.)
3. Go on the ‘Swing at the End of the World’
The Swing at the End of the World (El cumbio de las nubes) is located high on a mountain outside Baños. It’s a part of the park called La Casa del Arbol, which is a beautiful place to visit, whether you plan to go on the swing or not.
How it works is you pay $1 to enter the Casa del Los Arboles park, and then everything there is free for you to use – the swings (there is the larger, famous one for older kids and adults, but also smaller swings for young children), zipline, gardens, and many lookouts along the mountain range. There’s a cafe onsite to buy drinks or snacks. It’s a beautiful, charming place.
We spent about an hour here, you could do more or less if you wanted to. The path from the parking lot to the Casa del Arbol is a bit of a steep walk, but is only a few minutes. We paid a cab company to have a driver bring us there, wait while we visited, and then take us to our next destination.
Uber works well in Banos, but we sometimes had trouble getting a driver to pick us up at places that were in the outskirts of town, as this place is. This is why we opted to booked a taxi company, Serví Taxi Baños, in advance. To be honest, I wouldn’t say the service was amazing, but other than being a bit late picking us up, it worked out fine.
4. Soak in hot springs
Baños, sitting right at the foot of an active volcano (Tungurahua) has naturally heated groundwater rich with minerals from travelling through the earth. Soaking in the hot springs is supposed to be very therapeutic and healing for your body, and there are many hot springs in the area where you can do so. Some are very simple, and others are more high-end and expensive.
Piscinas de Termas de la Virgen is the most popular hot spring to visit in Baños; on the edge of town, right beside the Cascada de la Virgen waterfall. This place gets pretty packed on summer holidays and weekends, but the entrance fee is pretty affordable at only a few bucks per person. One thing to note here is that a swim cap is required, but luckily they had some that we could rent.
The other hot spring we went to was Luna Volcan, and it was like night and day to the Termas de la Virgen. It was very pricey, but the views from the pools of the mountain range above Baños were out of this world! Luna Volcan was mentioned in Conde Nest Traveller, and you can also stay overnight here. Be prepared to pay North American level pricing here, but otherwise, dropping in for a swim and hot tubs was a really fun experience!
There are two other hot springs in Baños to choose from, Termas El Salado and Piscinas Santa Ana, both of which is supposed to be less busy than Termas El Virgen. Unfortunatley we didn’t have time to try them all!
5. Visit El Bosque Encantado
El Bosque Encantado is a walk through attraction made to look like a magical, enchanted forest. There are many displays of faires, witches, and a whole section on Harry Potter. It takes about an hour to walk through the whole thing, but you could spend longer here if you wanted to take lots of photos (there are many photoops) or eat in one of the on-site cafes.
I wasn’t expecting much from El Bosque Encantado, but was pleasantly surprised. We truly loved it here. Everything was very handmade, and put together with so much care and creativity. It was unlike anything that we’ve seen in North America in a long time.
Given that at home, most things like this are often ‘digital/immersive’ experiences, it was actually a novelty to visit a place like this that was put together with real objects with so much care. The set ups at Bosque Encantado was beautiful, and I definitely felt the enchantment as we walked through the ‘forest.’
The entrance fee for El Bosque Encantado was $5 per person, and it included a taste of a drink for adults. During the day, there are more staff on site to help you with photo ops and poses. As the night went on, less of the photo op stations were staffed, so I believe that means that a lot of the staff go home in the evening. So it seems that there are some bonus to visiting in the daytime vs the night. A definite upside to coming at night is getting seeing it at night is getting to see it all lit up. There’s also a viewpoint where you can look down into the twinkly lights of Baños.
6. Go see Cascada de la Virgen lit up at night
As you may have guessed by now, Baños loves to illuminate things at night – the enchanted forest, el pailon de diablo waterfall, and this too. The Cascada de la Virgen, which is the waterfall right beside the hot spring is illuminated every night, changing colours. It looks so pretty cascading down the edge of the mountain all lit up. Its definitely worth walking over to get views of, as its just a short 5-minute walk from downtown Baños.
You can get pretty soaked by this waterfall when you’re right up close to it, so wear good shoes for the slippery ground. The hot spring beside it, Termas de la Virgen is open late and you can also visit that hot spring at dark so you can enjoy the illuminated waterfall beside it. It did look fairly busy though.
7. Visit El Manto de La Novia Waterfall
El Manto de la Novia is something we were really surprised wasn’t more popular. It ended up being the highlight of our trip to Ecuador. When people ask us about Ecuador and what we liked so much about it, this waterfall, and the activities surrounding it always come up.
For one Manto de la Novia is a tall waterfall. Waterfalls similar to it in a place like Iceland, or even Canada, would have massive crowds – but we had this magical place practically all to ourselves!
We did a hike down to the waterffall, which was quite steep, and allows you to cross the suspension bridge. The hike and bridge are free, but once we got to the other side, there was a little cottage with bathrooms. We paid a man there to bring us right to the foot of the waterfall, where we were close enough to get drenched. he took family photos of us.
My husband and older daughter did the zip-lining. They charged us $15 per person ($30 in total) and it included two ziplines in total – one going there, and one going back.
In addition, we took the cable car, which only cost a couple of dollars each. It was amazing to go right over the waterfall, see the river that it flows from and get views of where the cascades fall from over the cliff. All in all, we were amazed by this amazing waterfall and how pristine it felt to have so few other people there. It felt like we could really enjoy the beauty and take it in.
8. Enjoy some great dining
Baños has endless restaurants. There are so many restaurants that I think it’s impossible to say which are the best, because youd need to stay there for months in order to try them all. Basically every other business is a restaurant.
- Sher E Punjab Rincon de la India- I highly recommend Sher E Punjab Rincon de la India, it was some of the best Indian food I ever had. I come from Southern Ontario which has a large Indian population, and I’ve been to countless restaurants – and still I found this place impressive.
- Pancho Villa Mexican Restaurant – we came here because we were intending to go to Cafe Hood (a place I was really excited about as I’m vegetarian) but it was closed unexpectedly. We ened up at this Mexican place and it was a great experience! Really nice decorative interior, very nice owners, and the food was delicious
- Aromi – a cafe that does sandwiches, grilled cheese, and more simple meals, but they serve locally sourced hot chocolate and coffee, and they also sell bags of coffee. There are two different locations, and the menu was a lot more limited at one over the other, so we were a bit confused by that. We had dinner here but it would be ideal for a smaller lunch unless you just want a small dinner
9. Try sugar cane taffe or Jugo de Caña
We started seeing many signs of Jugo de Caña once we got to Baños. Juices were very common in Quito too, but Baños was the first place we saw signs for jugo de cana specifically, or sugar cane juice. It was everywhere, with many street vendors selling it and little stalls dedicated to it specifically. Jugo de Cana is the extract of sugarcane, and Ecuador is one of the few places in the world where you can try it.
In addition, you will see lots of candies made out of sugarcane. Sugarcane toffee, otherwise known as melcocha. Many vendors were handing out free pieces of melcocha, in hopes that you’ll buy some after you taste it. And to be honest, its quite good! Although its sugar, its very close to its original form.
10. Walk through El Mercado Central
El Mercardo Central in downtown Baños is a great place to buy fresh fruit, and to have an affordable lunch. It’s located in the heart of downtown There was a stall selling empanadas with banana and cheese, with sugar caked on the outside – 6 empanadas for $1.
There are also several vendors selling juices (jugos) made with fresh fruit. We got jugos almost every day, they had flavours made from fresh fruits like watermelon, mango, orange, passionfruit, and guanabana.
I hope that this guide has given you many ideas of things to do in Baños. Baños has the best of many worlds – it has mountains high enough that the clouds touch the top, but its not too high in elevation. Coming to Baños from Quito was a nice break from the altitude sickness. Baños is an amazing place, and well worth a spot on your Ecuador itinerary!