Left the hostel in Quito a little after 9am having overslept due to forgetting to change my mobile phone (using it as alarm clock) time forward after leaving the Galapagos.
We caught a taxi near the plaza and got a lift to the bus station in south Quito which wasn’t too far but as it was raining I didn’t feel like haggling over the $2.50 he charged us. The taxi drivers in Quito will rip you off blind if they can get away with it. It’s a gamble between agreeing on a price which is a bit higher than if they used the meter, or demanding they put the meter on and being driven the slowest possible route through congested side streets and bad traffic.
We were dropped off across the road from the bus depot and crossed under the road through a dark and scary pedestrian tunnel before entering the almost as dark and scary bus station. We found the ticket counters and the first one we tried had a luxury bus going to Baños but not leaving until 1pm. A few counters down we found another leaving in 20 minutes. Much more suited to our impulsive and unplanned travel needs! J
After being warned twice by the ticket seller and then again by the bus driver to be watch our backpack carefully, we took our seats on the “express” bus for the 3.5 hour trip.
Despite being “express” the bus stopped frequently and Quito being quite a sprawling city it took a while to get out of the ‘burbs. After an hour of travel I noticed a signpost saying “Quito 15kms”!
Heading south through the mountains I was hoping to have a good view of some volcanoes but there was too much cloud. They put on a rather violent movie called “The Condemned” which we thought was inappropriate for a bus with kids on it but it killed a couple of hours. We changed bus at Ambato and for the final hour of the journey we had a very scenic drive down a steep sided valley with a good view of the snow-capped Volcano Tungurahua (5016m) which stands over Baños .

From the bus station we walked through the town and found a hostel to stay at and then went for a walk to the baths. Baños is a small and tidy town nestled between a river and the Volcano’s foothills. There is a pretty waterfall and a couple of public baths fed by the thermal waters which give the town it’s name.