Livin It Large In Ecuador: Quilotoa

This weekend, I ventured to Quilotoa, a lake in a huge volcanic crater, with Lauren, Colleen, and Lisa (Fulbrights who are actually my age - or closer than anyone else I have met). We left Saturday morning after my tutoring, and unfortunately, the trip took much longer than expected. First, we had to take a bus to South Quito, which took about 2 hours. Next, we took a 1.5 hour bus ride to Latacunga (the town where the Mama Negra Festival was). In Latacunga, as we were all starving by this point, we had lunch before continuing our journey. It was nice to see Latacunga without all the festivities of La Mama Negra - many more stores were open and we were able to see the beautiful architecture of the town. We then boarded another bus, which took us to Chugchilán, the town with our hostel. This 3 hour bus ride was absolutely terrifying - we flew along curvy roads through the mountains and I honestly thought the bus was going to fall off the road. However, the long trip was fully worth it, as our hostel and Quilotoa were BEAUTIFUL.

Our hostel, the Black Sheep, reminded me a lot of the hostel in Cotopaxi that I stayed in. It was deep in the Andes with the most beautiful views. Soon after arriving, we had a wonderful vegetarian dinner of eggplant parmesan (possibly the first vegetarian meal I've had since arriving in Quito). As we needed to get up bright and early to begin our hike on Sunday, we were fast asleep by 9:30 in our cosy cabin with a nice fire warming the place.

We woke up on Sunday to a wonderful pancake breakfast and soon after 7, our camioneta (pick-up truck) arrived to take us to Quilotoa. This ride was probably one of my favorite parts of the weekend. We rode in the back of the truck, holding tightly to the frame and hoping to catch all the beautiful views as we sped through the mountains. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures as I was using all my strength not to fall out of the truck. After the 45 minute ride, we were all freezing, but the views were definitely worth not being able to feel our fingers.

Quilotoa, the lake itself, was beautiful. We eagerly began the trek down the crater to the lake - this was the easy part. At the bottom of the crater, we rented kayaks to check out the crater from the water. After eating our packed lunch from the hostel, we started the hike up out of the crater - this was the hard part. It took about 1 hour, which isn't long, but we had to basically climb one wall of the crater solely on a sand path where you constantly lost your footing. Plus, you had to make room for horses, carrying those too lazy to hike out. We were ecstatic to finally finish the hike.

After finishing the hike and having a snack, we rented a van to take us back to Latacunga, where we were able to catch a bus to Quito. Luckily, the return trip was much quicker than the first trip. I was back home about 4 hours after leaving Quilotoa. Overall, it was a great weekend with wonderful company, great hiking, and wonderful sights.