This weekend we made another excursion outside of Quito to the mountainous region of Quilitoa. There are a number of small towns that make up the ¨Quilitoa Loop¨and we were able to visit three of them in two days. Friday morning we took a 2 hour bus to the town of Latacunga where we walked to another bus station, wanting to go to Quilitoa, and they immediately threw us on a bus that was completely full. There were at least 10 people standing in the aisle and we had to stand for an hour and a half in the aisle until [View Full Entry]

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In Chugchilan I finally met some other backpackers, and I had a blast exchanging stories and finally speaking English. A few of us went on a day trip (searching for a Cloud Forest and a cheese factory, neither of which we found), and were surrounded by a pack of fierce, angry dogs at one point, but overall it was a peaceful two days at the wonderful Cloud Forest Hotel. Chugchilan is a lovely little town, and anyone looking for somewhere to stay before or after Quilotoa should absolutely consider staying there. It has excellent views of the Rio Toachi Canyon, and [View Full Entry]

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After barely sleeping in my leaky room in Quilotoa, I simply wanted to get out of that town, despite feeling tired and a bit ill. Atahualpa and Maria left with a guide at around 8:30 AM, and I stayed behind curled up in my bed, leaving periodically to stand outside when the sun peeked through the clouds. It was still in the high forties at around 9:30, so I decided to pack up and leave, instead of waiting for the 1:30 bus. It was the only way for me to warm up my body, so I began to walk back to [View Full Entry]

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After a short bus layover in Latacunga and an interesting ´bagged´lunch, I took a second bus into the clouds and to an area called Tigua. Here I stayed at the Posada de Tigua, a family-run farm house. When I first arrived, I went for a hike near the Rio Toachi Canyon (more to come about this canyon later), and then returned for one of the best dinners I´ve ever eaten. Everything was organically grown right at their farm, and all of it -- the soup, chicken, potatoes, carrots, greens -- was delicious. For breakfast, the fresh cheese, milk and yogurt were [View Full Entry]

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2 blog postings in one day!!! I was feeling bad with the less that standard performance that I had once kept up, and combined with much information, I decided to post this one today as well (the real truth is is that this is the fastest internet that I have found in a long time, and it is really cheap as well...how could I not take advantage of this). This blog will be about the Quilitoa Loop. What it is is a more or less loop of small towns that you can go through, with a crater lake located at Quilitoa. [View Full Entry]

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Today we set off for Lake Quilotoa, also know as crater lake. Why? Because it's a lake in a crater of course. An extinct volcano to be more precise. The drive out was a good 2 hours on windy roads and switchbacks across beautiful mountain scenery. Our driver, Luis, was a good natured friendly man with a quiet disposition. A man of few words at first till Megan broke out the Spanish on him, he was all talk after that. Lake Quilotoa is a stunning sight. The lake has a deep rich green color due to the high levels of dissolved [View Full Entry]

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Hey Team, here´s a little update, sorry I havent written too many blogs in this country- the rainy weather everyday supresses my writing style. This Saturday I went to a huge lake/lagoon called Quilotoa. It´s about 4 hours from Quito- I went with 8 other students from my school and the english speaking director of the school from Germany. Weather was completely awesome when we arrived at the lake-it was cloudy and pouring down rain!! What an exciting climate to do a 5 hour hike around the lake in- and knowing me and my extreme love of exercise you´ll know how [View Full Entry]

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Hello to you all, firstly apologies for being so slack on the blog front, we have been incredibly busy as you will see....! The last blog saw us arriving in northern Ecuador, greeted by quite possibly the worst weather we had seen since leaving the UK and to be honest, it didn´t lay up for quite some time! After arriving, we headed south to Quito which was literally monsoonal, after checking out the city as much as possible without looking like drowned rats, and camping out in our hotel room for a day we decided that there must have been more [View Full Entry]

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On to the final country of the trip then and into Ecuador the hard way. From Trujillo, it was 3 separate bus trips, totalling 24 hours, to get the city of Cuenca on the Central highlands route through Ecuador. Unfortunately, bus comfort deterioates into Ecuador so it was no comfortable bus seats to sleep on for us. Instead pretty hard seats, that didn´t recline much, accompanied by that much loved South American synthesiser music and 1970´s Mexican musicals on the TV at full volume. Although all of this was interrupted by a 12:45am border crossing at a mosquito infested river with [View Full Entry]

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Wow, what an amazing week! The last time I posted, we were in Quito and we were going to head out into the rural highlands of Ecuador. We took a bus two hours south of Quito to a small city at 11,000 feet called Latacunga. When we got to Latacunga, it was market day and the city was filled with traditional Andean people that come down from the mountains to buy supplies for the week. These people dress in traditional dress that is characterized by bright coloured shawls, and small black hats. They are also very small people, where the men [View Full Entry]

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