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The Incredible Lake Inside The Volcano
In my top 3 of the most beautiful things I've ever seen! Ecuador's Capital: Quito (05/05/2018-07/05/2018) Quito is the highest capital city in the World... at a whopping 2,800m! The airport is pretty far away from the centre, so I caught a bus (1 hour), then taxi (1 hour) with a Colombian girl from Cali (hilariously, we made friends via Google Translate). We had arrived just as a very rainy and loud thunder storm started. Jeez.. I couldn't believe how lovely our taxi man was.. so lovely in fact that, I got his number in preparation for using him for the next 2 days. But when it came to the last stop.. my hostel.. he tried the whole "mucho traffic" "no change" game and wanted to charge me $20; not quite the price of $5 he initially requested. At this point, I reflected upon the time our dear Patrick had once warned us that some people in S. America will say anything to squeeze more money out of gringos. Sad, but true. So we argued for 5 minutes. Eventually I paid him the $5 (he did have change) and got out the taxi. Needless to say, I deleted his number.
During my time in Quito, I did the Teleférico cable car
up to 4000m for (cloudy) views over Quito (there was a fun looking oxygen bar at the top though, and eventually the cloud did clear a little), the free city tour (randomly meeting a pal who I had met one night out in Cali), visited Mitdad del Mundo (The Middle Of The World).... and there was also further fleecing attempts (e.g. a lady trying to short change me by $10 in a shop). During the city tour, we visited a chocolate cafe, watched the bustling changing of the guards, visited pretty churches, and learnt about some of Quito’s history!
Chocolate One of my favourite topics. Since entering Ecuador, my chocolate consumption has rapidly increased tenfold. What is so special about Ecuadorian chocolate, you might ask? Well my friends, only about 5 percent of the cacao beans grown in the world are gourmet beans, or ‘fine aroma’ cacao. And 60 percent of these cacao beans are grown in Ecuador. These gourmet beans make gourmet chocolate. Dark.. rich.. mouth-watering.. gourmet chocolate. In hot chocolate or in a bar? I’m not fussy.
Mitad del Mundo A trip to this beautiful country would be incomplete without seeing the Middle of
The Changing of the Guards
Every Monday at 11am in Plaza Grande, the most iconic square in the Old Town the World. The word ecuador is Spanish for equator, y'know. The funny thing is that the monument was actually built in the wrong place. It was built by French scientists a long time ago.. when they did not have the luxury of GPS then, so they missed the center of the earth (0 latitude and 0 longitude) by less than 300 meters (which I think is still pretty damn good)! The new line was found using a military-grade GPS. There are various little museums and science demonstrations inside the complex, e.g. you can balance an egg on a nail. They also demonstrated how water falling through a drain will either turn clockwise or counterclockwiseon either side of the equator (
the coriolis effect) and it doesn't spin at all on the equator (which also explains why Ecuador can't experience hurricanes, interesting, huh!).
The Quilotoa Loop (07/05/2018 - 11/05/2018)
The Quilotoa Loop is an epic, self-guided, 3 day hike in the stunning Andes mountains. It takes you up to a 3km shimmering 3,900m volcano crater lake. 800 years ago, the volcano had erupted so violentently, that it collapsed and sent up massive clouds of volcanic ash that spread
Large Crowds at The Plaza
The president of Ecuador waves from his balcony! throughout the northern Andes mountain range. The collapse of the volcano formed the 3 km-wide crater. Dissolved minerals in the water give it the gorgeous blue-green colour
Desperate to do the loop (it was 1# on my Ecuador list), but not wanting to do it solo (I had read getting lost was inevitable and wild, hungry dogs were common), I joined Shaun and Chuck; two lads from Chicago. Chuck got daily altitude nose bleeds and I'm pretty sure he did not actually enjoy walking, and poor Shaun was terrified of heights. Did somebody not tell him we were climbing a volcano at 3,900m? But I enjoyed their company and their pace.
We hiked between 4-6 hours a day, climbing in and out of canyons and up and down, passing remote Andean villages, watching the local women harvesting in their traditional outfits. We stayed at little hostels along the way and every evening we would collect our hiking instructions for the following day (which were usually unhelpful and confusing). The altitude was certainly a challenge. Finally reaching the top, the crater was FULL of cloud, and it started to rain... we went inside the one tiny hut where a
family cooked us coca tea over a fire. Just goes to show you how undeveloped it is! Within 5 minutes, the cloud and rain had gone and we were rewarded with views of the incredible lake. The rain returned, and it took 2 hours to get to the little village on the other side of the crater. We passed some crazy vegetation along the way, it really felt like we were on another World! We spent the evening drying off by the fire, gorging ourselves on hot chocolates, and playing rummy with some new pals.
Highlights:
- Balloo (the 1# hostels dog)
- The 1# hostel in general (it was friggin awesome)
- The crazy fluffy bedding in 2# hostel (it was fur everything.. fur pillow, fur blanket, fur sheet)
- The hot chocolates (yum!)
- The lake... of course.
- Oh and meeting the lovely Hannah Moore: an adventurous and adorable, but clumsy and ill-prepared English traveller.
Lowlights:
- Being unable to successfully jump across the river despite having the longest legs of the group, oops.
- Getting absolutely drenched at the end of the hike.
- Stumbling upon a hostel akin to the one from The
Pretty Lanes
Quito was the first city which was declared as a World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978 Shining (it was truly terrifying - we left immediately).
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