Blogs from Chugchilan, Centre, Ecuador, South America - page 3

We spent four days in the mountains of the Quilotoa Loop, a cluster of indigenous villages that surround Quilotoa, a dormant volcano with a caldera 2.5 kilometers wide and filled with turquoise water. The Loop has awesome hiking trails and a landscape of pastures and farming fields so it looks like a patch-work quilt was thrown over the rolling hills. The place is teeming with exotic wildlife. We´re talking llamas, pigs, wild dogs (Trevor bravely defended us from PPs or potential predators) and lambikins of all sizes and colors. We stayed at the Black Sheep Inn, cited as one of the best inns in South America and named one of the top 10 eco-lodges in the world by Outside Magazine a few years ago. It´s at 10,500 feet and was built by two globally-minded Americans. Everything ... read more

My next stop was Quilitoa, a remote mountainous region and some of the most spectacular scenery I have seen so far. It was a 4-hour journey over unpaved roads, with a bus driver who was a certified NUTTER! Generally if a road has potholes, the bus slows down and gently weaves around them. This guy continued at full pelt and wrenched the steering wheel hard to avoid them. This caused the bus to lean on it´s side precariously, passengers flying around and with the back-end sliding out on occasion. He also went dangerously close to a number of crumbling cliff edges. A white knuckle ride for sure. But we got there on time and in one piece. I stayed at an Eco-Lodge called "The Black Sheep Inn", which was quite possibly the BEST place I have ... read more

I'm afraid to say that this may be my last blog in a good long time (unless I decide to write one in the next few days, just for fun). I now have three days left at work (because there are no classes on Friday, as per usual), before I set off on the long-awaited and much-delayed Galapagos trip, in first-class, luxury-liner style. Wahey!... read more

(I´m actually in Machachi, about an hour and a half south of Quito at the moment, but that wasn´t on the list). Got back a few hours ago from a successful summit of Iliniza Norte, a new high at 5126 m 16817 ft. No probs, which bodes well for Cotopaxi on Sunday morning. The hut had a gas heater and stoves (and about 12 people) so it wasn´t too cold at night. The windows didn´t open, though, so there was moss growing inside from all the moisture. Slept on and off from about 8:30pm to 5:20 for breakfast. A combination of altitude, cold (temperature and illness) and dodgy mattress and bed combined to make sleep difficult. Maybe Cotopaxi will be more comfortable (he thinks naively). So no it´s rest time. And tomorrow we also have off. ... read more

We'd climbed a volcano. So what next? The Quilotoa loop... From Latacunga there's a fairly well trodden path around a series of villages known as the Quilotoa loop. Quilotoa itself is a stunning emerald green lake in the caldera of an extinct volcano at around 3800m above sea level. It takes between 2-3 days to do the loop, and buoyed by relative sucess at Cotopaxi we decided to give it a look. The first leg of the journey was a straightforward taxi journey to Saquisili (you see why we were having trouble with the pronounciation?!) along with Rein & Char, two of the folks that we had climbed Cotopaxi with. Saquisili is the site of a colourful Indian market every Thursday, which was why we started the loop there. Although we had already seen the market ... read more