Blogs from Quilotoa, Centre, Ecuador, South America - page 6

After a short bus layover in Latacunga and an interesting "bagged" lunch (see photo), 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 farmhouse. 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 rich and creamy. This hotel was about double the cost of most other hotels in this country, but well worth the splurge. They have horses to rent and have wonderful trails around the ... read more

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 minerals left behind from the volcano. This is also the reason for the absence of life in the lake a little eerie if you ask Jarrod. We decide to make the quarter-mile trek down the ... read more

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 border guards who really would rather not have been there at 12:45am! Still, we made it in the end to Cuenca, our first stop in Ecuador. Cuenca Cuenca is another beautiful colonial city (Do i ... read more

Hola from Quito….again We are back from some more adventures, and preparing for our next. So here we are writing another couple of entries about our latest exploits. First things first I suppose. We both got a little sick when we were spending time around Cotopaxi at Hosteria Papagayo. No offence to the Hosteria, but, we ate and drank nothing but food and drink provided by them for 4 days, and both got sick. The place was very beautiful, our room was amazing, and the staff was extremely helpful, the manager even gave us a free ride into Quito because he was driving in, but we both got ill. Take it for what it is worth I suppose. But, we took a little Cipro, and we are both better. Yippie. Now, onto the latest adventure. Yesterday ... read more

The next morning I left early to hike to the Laguna de Quilotoa. This is a beautiful deep green crater lake. The Quilotoa is a journey around the villages in the Quilotoa region, such as Tigua, Zumbuhua, Chugchilan, Isinlivi and Sichos. Most of them are just tiny and basic, but have interesting markets. Stefán, one of the sons at Posada de Tigua had given me directions on how to get to the laguna. He had even drawn a map and it seemed to be pretty straightforward. He said it would be around 4-5 hours. So I walked happily to the next village, through and a long a beautiful canyon and then further on to another pueblo. Here I couln’t first find the path Stefan had indicated on his map. However, some locals told me how to ... read more