Imagine Ecuador - Tour Operator Baños — Local services in Baños de Agua Santa

My wife and I stumbled upon Juan and his shop, Imagine Ecuador, on our first day in Baños.  We ended up renting a jeep from him for a few hours to check out some of the local waterfalls and I had a total blast driving this thing!   I hadn't driven a manual transmission in years, but it was like it was yesterday as soon as I drove away from their shop.  Despite the fact that we hit a torrent of rain a few minutes after leaving and had to put the top up ourselves we still had an amazing time driving out to Pailon del Diablo. Mechanically, everything was well maintained and perfectly safe and we never felt anything less than comfortable.  After this had gone so well, we decided to book our rappelling/canyon tour through Juan as well for their Casahurco Tour.   While I was a bit skeptical, my wife was 100% on board with this.   After meeting our guides, Darwin and Sergio today, I couldn't have been more wrong!   We were fortunate enough to get a tour with just the two of us and for the entirety of the trip we were perfectly comfortable and felt completely safe with their guidance.   All of the equipment was up to date, the wet suits and shoes fit great and both Darwin and Sergio were able to help us feel confident in what we were about to be doing for the morning.  They pretty quickly picked up on what worked for both of us and used that to comfortably get us rappelling down the next five waterfalls.  By the start of the second one, we were all already laughing at each other and cheering ourselves on.   Needless to say, I'm typing this now, because we didn't break rule #1.  You'll find out when you book with Imagine Ecuador what it is.

As an added note, because some groups can vary in size, if you have the opportunity to get Darwin and Sergio for just your group, it's worth the extra few dollars.  For what it's worth, trust me.

When we eventually make it back to Baños, we'll be searching these guys out for our next adventures.  We can't recommend them enough.

The icing on the cake is that once your trip is complete, you go back to Imagine Ecuador where they transfer the days Go Pro footage to your phone for no cost at all. So what other companies charge good amounts for, you get completely for free.

Booking with these guys should even be a second guess.  If you're reading this,...

We hired a buggy from this company 3 hours for $45. To its credit the buggy was in good condition and I have no complaints about that.

However, when we asked the salesman for a map of routa del cascada he didn’t provide us with a map but put in a destination into google maps that was further than any blog I had seen for ruta del cascada and didn’t include any of the stops.

With the time it takes to hike to diablo it would have been impossible to go as far as he suggested and return to banos within the 3 hour timeframe.

We didn’t go the full way he suggested and still ended up 40 minutes late (largely because we wanted to drive out first with stops on the way back and realised that would be very late coming back if we went the full way he suggested).

He looked very surprised to see us back so early which was still about 40 minutes beyond the timeframe. We ended up paying for an extra 30 minutes but I think it is quite shady of him to put in an end destination that would be impossible to come back to within the 3 hour timeframe given the speed of the buggy and the need to actually stop to see some waterfalls. I suspect this is done to squeeze more cash out of trusting tourists. We chose not to book other tours with this company as a result.

I would advise booking with...

COTOPAXI CLIMBING My boyfriend and I arrange to a tour to climb Cotopaxi with Imagine Ecuador . The tour started in the morning with us getting picked up from the hostel in a nice and comfortable truck. On the way to Cotopaxi, our guide told us about the history of Ecuador, Quito, and the Cotopaxi region (in great English!).

The hike up to the refuge hut at 4864m was taxing but beautiful. Great guide , equipment in perfect conditions, food was great too . Our goal was to reach the summit of Cotopaxi, our guide went beyond our expectations to make sure we reached the top . Also Imagine Ecuador company gave us very good information to be prepared to climb the mountain such as good acclimatization and previous training on other mountains .

Overall, this was a breathtaking (literally) tour with a friendly and patient guide. There were plenty of great photo opportunities, and biosecurity measures were followed. While not cheap, this tour was excellent value for the price and we highly recommend Imagine Ecuador company.

Enjoy all U need is...