Change in the Weather...

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The rainy season has started in Quito, and today is probably almost as cold as it is back home (It’s in the low or mid 50s, I think). I just came from outside and could see my breath, and my fingers are numb as I try to type. A sort of funny thing about Ecuador: there are no weather forecasts really. The newspaper gives only the weather for that day, and there are no weatherpeople on TV. (My Spanish teacher said there isn’t a word for meteorologist, at least not the TV type.) I guess it makes sense, as volcanoes and earthquakes are a bigger threat than hurricanes or tornadoes. And with the year divided into the wet season and the dry season, maybe that’s all people need to know…

I took a couple of trips outside of Quito this past week. Both were great and made me happy to be leaving for other parts of the country in a couple of days. Quito is nice, but it is very polluted and crossing the street, any street, is a bit too much like a game of Frogger… This weekend just past my friend Roxane and I went to a couple of small towns just north of Otavalo, where the huge market is. The pictures are from a trip Sunday to Laguna Cuicocha (the name has something to do with guinea pigs), which might be my favorite place in Ecuador so far. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the lake, which is inside of a crater. The hike around the lake takes around 4 hours and is great, going up to around 1500 feet at the high points and through woods in some places. We encountered a bull, an alpaca and some friends from Quito along the way... And, as you can see, it was sunny (and warm).

On Saturday we went to Peguche, a village with a waterfall and lots of eucalyptus trees. Trying to follow a crude map showing the route between the waterfall and a park that we were told was worth visiting, we ended up hiking almost vertically through the trees for about 2 hours. We’d barely eaten and by the time we got to the park, its restaurant was closed. The park turned out to be not so great. It was dedicated to condors, which were impressive, but it was kind of sad watching them try to fly out of their cages (and some of them, their feet were chained). That night we stayed in Cotacachi, a tiny town that is known for its leather products and looks like something out of a Western. Except there are no saloons… Drinking on the street seemed to be a popular Saturday night activity among some of the men there.

(PS: Happy Halloween...)

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Comments

[chhavirina]

wow
that's it -- wow!