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Published: August 20th 2006
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Quilotoa Crater Lake
This is one gorgeous lake!! Laguna Quilotoa Well, we´re finally travelling after Quito. It was quite sad saying goodbye to Quito after being there for so long. It´s a busy, diverse city with lots of polluting buses but we really loved it. From the more touristy La Mariscal area to the Colonial Old Town to the modern New Town with all the shinier buildings... and all the lovely volcanoes surrounding it.
First journey was to Latacunga and from there to Laguna Quilotoa. It´s about 3 hours from Quito. We were going to stay in Zumbuhua (14km away from the lake) but as soon as we arrived we were being hassled in that wonderful south american way... where they will tell you anything to use their taxi service. They said it was cheaper up by the lake... I´m not sure if that was true, but it suited us because we really wanted to stay up there.
The lake is amazing as the photos show!! The vocano last errupted in 1797 (when the crater was formed). It is about 3800-4000m in altitude and after all the up and down with altitudes we´ve done recently, we felt this one a little! It was really cold up
there too -
but we have a fire in our room!!
We bumped into some kids herding their sheep back home (the ones in the photo). They were really sweet... Its a tiny little village at the top and there really is nothing there. It is a stunning location.
We met a couple of Americans in our accommodation (the only others there). They were lovely and knew loads about Ecuador - having spent about 8months in Ecuador. We all had cuy together (that´s Guinea Pig). Well you have to try it don´t you? I must say it really wasns´t that good... there isn´t much meat on a Guinea Pig... so I think I´ll stick to my chickens.
We got up to watch the sunrise over the lake.... really good! Bloody cold... but really great.
Baños A few more hours south and we were in Baños. Baños is really gorgeous and a wonderful place to stay and chill out for a few days... even weeks. The scenery is green and mountainous.... with waterfalls everywhere. Baños is overlooked by volcan Tungurahua - that´s the one that was erupting a couple of weeks ago and loads of
The scenery all around Banos
It is gorgeous and really hard to do it justice. people were evacuated from the area. Baños was on the wrong side. We didn´t get to see the volcano while we were there - it was too covered in clouds... but you could see the steam rising from the top!
We stayed in a little hotel named after me! It was soooo comfy....
It´s not a big town and really touristy. There are tour operators everywhere.
We decided to go on a 4 hour horse ride. Ooooh that was a long horseride... aching bums and muscles for ages afterwards... oh and my horse ran me into a wall so I had a massive bruise on my shin. The horses weren´t the most obedient! We had no helmets... no instruction... and our guide thought it was fun to constantly make us go faster... so our horses kept randomly breaking into trots and canters... that was fun considering I don´t really know how to ride that well!!!
We went up to Bellavista where you get a view over the whole of Baños and the volcano Tungurhua (if cloud free... it wasn´t). The ride back to town was a little terrifying. Ít was really steep and the horses were kind
of skidding down steep little trails on the side of this high mountain... and then Cam´s horse kept kicking mine if he got too close...
You can cycle the 60km down to Puyo on the edge of the Oriente (the jungle) and we were originally considering doing it the next day.... but there was no way in hell either of us were going to get on a bike the next day... so we went by Chiva instead - its a traditional kind of bus (see piccy)... We were able to sit on the top for a bit which was fantastic... the views were outstanding. Most of the time we stood on the back because technically the police don´t let us ride on the top. It was great. We saw loads of waterfalls... took an extremetly "safe" feeling cable car over one and went to look at the Diablo falls which were stunning. The bridge at the Diablo falls feels as though its about to fall down... rather than replace it they just say only 5 people at a time... we generally had about 7 people at a time on it...
Oh about the delicious looking pig hanging up...
really helps you build up an appitite. These are hanging up all over the place... people just carve bits off... so there are in various states of half pig, whole pig... etc. In the village of Quilotoa, we also had the pleasure of seeing a freshly killed sheep be hung up and skinned...mmm does make you love meat. You do get kind of used to seeing it...
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