Quilotoa

We regrettingly left Quito in the morning and split up with me and SM going on the Quilotoa loop and Charles and Monica climbing the Cotopaxi Volcano. We took the bus high into the Andes through mountains, plains, canyons and farmland passing remote little villages and thatched roof huts. We arrived to the little pueblo of Quilotoa at 3 in the afternoon and right away found a place to stay with a Quichua family in a room full of dilapadated beds and a very cosy fireplace.

The reason we chose this village is because its perched on a huge volcano which has emploded leaving a large crater lake surrounded by jagged peaks. We really didnt expect it to be that beautiful and we sat around ooh-ing and aah-ing for a good 20 mintues before starting our descent into the crater.

30 minutes and 60 photos later we were face to face with the lake and a bunch of donkeys (one oh which got stuck in the lake while getting a shower making for a very dramatic lifesaving procedure).

The best thing about living there is that we were basically sharing the house of Manuel and his family and really got to see how they live. Himself and his 4 children all wore identical felt bowler hats and colofrul scarfs. The women all had knee-high white socks, matching tiny black shoes and skirts while the men wrapped themselves in jackets and woven llama wool (from their very own llama, of course).

We got a room for 5 USD each, including great home cooked dinners and breakfasts. These are probably the freshest meals I've ever had with everything coming from the land around them, from the fried eggs for breakfast to the carrot and potato soups. In the evenings we all huddled infront of a tiny woodfired boiler as it was 4 degrees outside, with the wind beating at the thin walls.

After sitting mezmerized infront of our fireplace we went to bed with our 6 layers of sheets and shivered until morning, when we decided to walk the mountaintops surrounding the crater. We perilously walked with the deep crater to our left and the vast Andean planes to the right scaling peak after peak before finally reaching back to our little village of 50 people for a nice tuna lunch. On the crater walk we walked from almost vertical cultivated fields to pine forests, sand plains and windswept sandstone formations, crossing llamas and Quichua women on the way.


That night we went to bed early as the next morning we had a 4am wake up call to catch the 5am bus (the only bus of the day). We stood in the freezing pitch-black wind-swept cold for a good 40 minutes before the bus finally arrived to give our numbing apendages a rest.

Since we had time we stopped by Saquisili to see the weekly local market where people from hundreds of rural villages would come to buy and sell produce from hens to potatoes, fish, bananas, leeks, and blocks of sugar.

We then continued on to Baños where we spent the rainy afternoon in the local hot springs, jumping from freezing watershoots to boiling pools, and generally doing nothing at all except for getting wrinkled beyond comprehension.