Baños de Agua Santa

According to the Spanish-language histories of the town, Baños had no formal founding. The often-quoted date of 1553 is the year Dominican friars were assigned to evangelise the Amazon lowlands beyond it, and the cult of the Virgin here is thought to have begun in those years. A chronicle of 1604 describes a tiny settlement called the Asiento de los Baños, with hot springs at the foot of a waterfall and a small adobe chapel with a thatched roof, the Ermita de la Virgen. The Virgin's wooden image was said to have survived a fire in that chapel and, later, lava from Tungurahua that reached its doors, and these stories made the town a place of pilgrimage.

The present basilica was built between 1904 and 1944. In 1928 a road was opened from Ambato, making Baños the main route from the highlands to the Amazon, and in December 1944 the canton of Baños was formally created. The Ambato earthquake of 5 August 1949 reduced almost all of the town's buildings to rubble.

The volcano has shaped recent history above all. Tungurahua came back to life in 1999 after a long quiet period, and in October that year all of the town's more than 17,000 residents were evacuated for weeks. The eruptive phase that followed lasted until 2017, with its most violent eruption in August 2006 and further eruptions in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016, some of them forcing evacuations. The town recovered and built its economy on tourism.

Baños takes its full name, Baths of Holy Water, from the hot springs, whose minerals were long believed to have healing powers, and from the Virgin of the Holy Water, whose image stands in the basilica. Pilgrims come to give thanks and ask for blessings, and the walls of the church are lined with paintings of her miracles, among them saving the church from volcanic eruptions. Through October the town celebrates her fiestas with pilgrimages, processions and dancing.

The other side of the town is its adventure culture. Visitors raft and kayak on the Pastaza, go canyoning in the side streams, jump from the bridge over the gorge, and hike, cycle and ride horses in the hills, and the streets are lined with agencies selling these trips and tours into the Amazon. Balsa-wood parrots, sold in small shops, are a local craft.

In recent years the town has also taken up a modern figure, the duende or goblin, spread through art and tourism in the 21st century; Spanish-language studies note that it is often presented to visitors as an ancient tradition when it is in fact recent.

The 2022 census counted about 14,100 people in the town, making it the second-largest town in Tungurahua province after the capital, Ambato, to which it is closely tied: many residents commute there by road. Tourism is the most important business, from hostels, restaurants and tour agencies to the municipal pools, and the town's position as the last highland town before the Amazon basin keeps traffic flowing through it to Puyo and the lowlands.

The town's economy depends on visitors from abroad and, at weekends and holidays, from Ecuador's cities, and sugar-cane growing in the warm valley supplies its sweet-makers. Life centres on the park next to the basilica, the market and the main streets around them.

Living under an active volcano is part of everyday life, and residents remember the 1999 evacuation and the eruptions of the years that followed. More than 60 waterfalls in the surrounding area are the backbone of the tourist trade.

Baños is best known for melcocha, a sugar-cane taffy made from boiled raw cane syrup and described as Ecuador's hallmark candy. The abundance of sugar cane around the town made it a local speciality, and most of the country's melcocha comes from here.

Sugar cane is used in other ways too. Stalls press it into jugo de caña, a sweet, fresh juice, and sell short sticks of peeled cane to chew, along with colourful cane sweets. Melcocha and cane sweets are the snacks most visitors take home, and the stalls in front of the basilica sell them alongside crafts.

For meals, the town shares the cooking of the central highlands. Cuy, roast guinea pig, is a speciality of Andean cooking and is served in the market, while the almuerzo set lunch is the everyday meal. Hornado, whole roast pork, and llapingachos, fried potato-and-cheese patties, are common across the region, and the town's many restaurants also cater to international visitors.