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Published: June 30th 2018
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Looking back at our three weeks in Ecuador I think I would say I preferred it to Colombia and it’s probably one of my favourite countries we’ve visited over the course of the whole trip so far, which is something I hadn’t really been expecting to say before we went there. I think we found the people there to be a bit more friendlier and helpful than those we’d come across in Colombia and on the whole the places we visited were very easy on the eye.
After getting across the border we arrived in Otavalo after a long day travelling. We fell in love with our hostel, El Andareigo Hostel, so much in fact we ended up staying a couple of nights longer than we had originally planned. The hot showers had a lot to do with that decision, but we also really like the atmosphere in the town and felt at home there. It had felt like a while since we’d done any walks so we dusted off our boots and walked along the railway track past a little village of indigenous people and to the sound of children in the playground during their lunch break to check
out Cascada de Peguche. The next day we were a bit more adventurous and completed the 5 hour hike around Lago Cuicocha, also known as the ‘lake of guinea pigs’ owing to the shape of the two islands in the middle of the crater but we were far from convinced! It was a good walk if a bit wet and cloudy, at one point when we stopped for lunch you couldn’t see the lake due to the thick cloud that had blown across. At over 3,000m above sea level we could definitely feel the effects of the altitude especially on the way up some of the steeper sections of the trail.
From Otavalo we headed to Quito the capital city. The old colonial town here was pretty similar to others we have already seen and the most impressive thing about the city was probably the thunder and lightning that we had one afternoon when we could feel the hostel shake due to how loud it was! We walked up the towers of the cathedral, Basílica del Voto Nacional, which gave us a great view across the city and we watched the changing of the guard at the main plaza
which we almost missed due to thinking a riot was about to take place! Apparently every Monday the same thing happens as the president comes out for the ceremony and is jeered and heckled by a fairly peaceful group of protesters outside.
In the second month of our travels in India we had been told about a four day trek you could do called the Quilitoa Loop, and since then I’d been quite keen to give it a go so from Quito we took the bus down to a town called Latacunga where we stayed the night before taking a bus out to another village to start. It was really good fun and after doing the guided Lost City Trek in Colombia we were really pleased to have had the chance to do a self guided hike. I’ve written in more detail about the four days in my next post if you’re interested.
After the trek we headed to Banos where we spent the first couple of days resting our legs, watching Liverpool lose in the Champions League final and catching up with Dean an English guy who we had met on the walk around Lago Cuicocha. We
had also bumped into him on the Quilitoa Loop unexpectedly and he was keen to go for a beer and watch the football so it was a match made in heaven! It was whilst we were in Banos we decided we wanted to head into the Amazon in Ecuador having spoken to a couple of different people who said that they thought it was best to do it from here rather than Peru or Bolivia which were our other options. So we booked a trip to the Cuaybeno Reserve for my birthday which was a few days away and decided to use the extra time we had here wisely and booked 4 days of 4 hour Spanish lessons. Going back to school was interesting and receiving homework to complete each night was definitely a shock to the system but I felt like I learnt a lot and things have started to make sense even though on the third day I thought my head was going to explode with everything that was trying to go in!
The Amazon trip was everything we hoped for it to be and it was a great way to spend my birthday. I’ve written about
that in more detail in a separate post as well. From Lago Agrio we took the overnight bus back to Banos where we stayed for a final night before we headed to Peru. The border crossing was much quicker this time round and the journey was quite straight forward but after the best part of 20 hours on a bus we were definitely very grateful to arrive at the beach in Mancora in the north of Peru!
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