Getting from Latacunga to Banos

After finishing the Quilotoa Loop, we quickly collected our bags from our hostel in Latacunga so that we could proceed to our next stop, Banos. When we had been planning our route whilst sat in our hostel in Quito, we thought this would be easy. If you look at Google Maps, the two cities are quite close to each other and seemed to have major roads linking them together. Plus, both places are firmly on the tourist trail, Banos especially, so you’d imagine they’d be easy to access right? Wrong…

The bus terminal in Latacunga does not have a general information point. You therefore need to look around the different stalls selling tickets from the different bus companies to find one going where you wish. After looking at every stall, we still couldn’t find one going to Banos. A quick online search found a blog mentioning having to change in Riobamba before heading up to Banos. This seemed ridiculous, but we checked with the companies heading to that city and they concurred. We also checked whether you can change in Ambato instead but seemingly there are no links from the station there onto Banos. So it seemed that we had no choice.

It was already early to mid-afternoon by the time we arrived at the terminal with all of our bags. Whilst not as early as we had planned on being there, we were still confident that we’d have enough time to get to Banos. What we hadn’t factored in was just how long it would take to get from Latacunga to Riobamba. The bus didn’t seem to be stopping that often and yet it was taking hours as we slowly made our way south. The intense thunderstorm we were passing through probably didn’t help. We were getting to the point, as we approached the outskirts of Riobamba, where we were worrying that there wouldn’t be any connections by the time we actually got to the city, and were looking at places we could stay near the terminal, when the bus pulled over on the side on the motorway.

Without any warning the bus driver’s assistant, the one who sorts the tickets, came to us and started speaking quickly and pointing at a bus that had stopped on the opposite side of the motorway. Apparently that bus was going to Banos so we should get out. In hindsight it was very nice of them to have arranged this. We hadn’t even told them we were going to Banos – it must have been communicated from the ticket office. But at that moment it was a frantic rush to pick up our stuff and get off the bus. I didn’t even manage to put on a jacket before stepping out into the torrential rain. And once outside, it was too wet to put stuff down to get organised, so it was a case of hoping I didn’t drop anything, picking up our main bags from the side compartment of the bus, and then running across the motorway to the bus on the opposite side. From the bus first stopping to sitting down on the second bus was significantly less than five minutes. I’m still not sure how we managed to get across with all of our stuff intact but we did. We were absolutely drenched and in a bit of a panic but once we confirmed with the driver’s assistant (and google maps) that we were on the correct bus and heading in the right direction, we were able to relax.

One thing that we found strange, however, was that we were heading back on the same road we had just come down on. We had just assumed that we would be heading back on the other major road that linked Riobamba to Banos but this wasn’t the case. This just made the route we were taking even more stupid. We eventually turned east before reaching Ambato and made it to Banos in the evening.

The last thing we needed after spending hours on a stupid route was arriving to our hostel and having the owner give us a quizzical look. Why had we done that? There was a direct bus to Quito that would go through Latacunga. Rather perplexed we looked into it and yes, there did seem to be buses that did this. We couldn’t work out how we had messed it up so badly. But after more research it seemed that it was to do with where we gotten on the bus. Those of you who have read my previous blog post on Latacunga will know that there are two main places where buses drop you off for Latacunga. The obvious one is the terminal in the city centre. The second is on the side of the bypass, a twenty minute taxi ride away from the centre. It seems that the buses from Quito to Banos do not go to the terminal, they simply bypass Latacunga. The side of the bypass where buses can drop you off is not a proper bus stop and thus has no timetable. To get on that bus you would need to see when it left Quito and try and guess when it would be passing Latacunga so that you can flag it down. Even then, there is no guarantee that there would be any spaces remaining. Despite all of this, if we had known beforehand that it was possible to go directly to Banos in this way, we would have tried to risk it.

So there you go. I just thought I’d share our experience to provide anyone thinking of doing the same journey a little bit of background information. Whilst it is certainly possible to get from Latacunga to Banos, it is anything but straightforward.