Baños is a very photogenic little town. (When it isn’t raining torrentially, which it does a lot apparently).
The photo at the top is the big waterfall right in the town.
The village is surrounded by incredibly steep mountains, and the waterfall gushes out of the hill less than a kilometre from the market place.
In the fifties they built a swimming pool at the foot of the waterfall. There are also concrete tubs so you can do your laundry and water your donkey or whatever. Very convenient.
I’m so glad I climbed the hill and checked out the high-rise Baños cemetery.
For a Catholic-kitsch-lover like me it’s a photo fiesta!
The cemetery (above) mirrors the town in a weird way. It has streets, lamp posts, and family crypts that are constructed and decorated just like the houses in the village (below).
Every grave is lovingly decorated with photos, little votive statues, plastic flowers, even sometimes flashing LED lights.
This is luxury apartment living for dead people.
Some of these graves look more comfortable than hostels I’ve stayed in. The neighbours wouldn’t wake you up banging doors in the middle of the night either.
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The “Baños Drivers Guild” has its own very luxurious apartment block.
The roads in Ecuador have been improved a lot in recent years, so hopefully the demand for condos in the Driver’s Guild crypt has declined, but this is still a bit of a worry for a hitchhiker.
There’s still plenty of construction going on in Baños cemetery.
The plots lower down the hill are jammed together, and almost overlapping.
Real estate prices in the more fashionable areas must be almost as steep as the landscape.
BTW:
As you know by now, my other big photographic obsession, aside from cemeteries (and scantily clad women of course) is graffiti.
For a small town, Baños has some really nice looking street art.
It seems like in Ecuador, as in Thailand, graffiti is widely tolerated, and the local shops and hotels seem to encourage artists to decorate their property.
Here’s a few of my favourite pieces I saw in Baños:
