Termas de Papallacta

At the altitude of 3300m and back in the Andean highlands we visited the country´s best and prettiest thermal baths and enjoyed pools of steamy water with outside temperatures of about 15 degrees and some nice green hillside views - unfortunately without a glimps of the volcano Antisano supplying the hot thermal water.

Nevertheless the arrival was quite an adventure and the coldest and shortest night we had to spent outside so far. After waiting 3 hours finally catching a bus in Limoncocha we got until Sacha, a town in the middle of nowhere in the Amazonas where obviously rarely end up tourists and we got starred at like crazy (what was actually funny because normally we are the ones checking out the local people). By that time it was already 6pm and we found a bus office selling us the last 3 bus tickets to Quito (Lisa had to sit next to the driver) leaving at 8.30pm. They told us we would arrive Papallacta at around 4.30-5.00am. What was perfectly fine with us - a night bus ride and than the 1 hour-hike up to the thermal baths to get there perfectly timed at the opening time of 6am to have the whole area all for ourselves. So much to the perfect plan. In the middle of the night the bus was stopped for border control... at that moment I didn´t even realized it was actually a border control: we all had to get out, the luggage was searched and the everyone except foreigners had to show their hand luggage. So we were called over to show our passports and (still everything handwritten) the policeman documented our names - all our last names were DEUTSCH and then our normal first name... in South America everyone has 2 last names so it was a bit of a confusing document with the last name following only the nationality. We could continue our journey and arrived 2.45 in Papallacta, a tiny and asleep village in the middle of the Andeans and it was raining. Suse with a cold and we all tired after this restless curvey trip were only longing for a bed. No chance of that. So what to do in the middle of the night. We decided to walk uphill to the village and found a hostal - all houses were dark and everyone sleeping except us. Fortunately they had a bench with a roof, so we sat there freezing on Suse´s camping mat and cuddled in her sleeping back and counting the hours until 5.30am to continue the hike uphill to the thermal bath. It felt endless and it was sooooo cold. Eventually morning came and we had several naps in these awesome hot water pools with no one else around until 8.30 or so.

Back in Quito we had another look at the map and found out that we didn´t take the route via Coca but via Lago Agrio and ended up 20km away from the Columbian border. Good we were not aware of that in the middle of the night.