24.08. - 26.08.11

Latacunga-Cotopaxi-Laguna Quilotoa

On Tuesday, 23.08.11 I took the night bus in CANOA at the coast to QUITO, the capital. The bus ride was ok and took seven hours. When we arrived in Quito at 4am in the morning I was a bit scared as I had to take a taxi from the north terminal to the south terminal which takes about 45 Minutes. But luckily I found a French couple who wanted to go there as well so we just shared a taxi to the south terminal where we arrived at 5am.

And again I/we were lucky as we could jump straight on to the next bus to LATACUNGA which was only two hours away. At around 7am we arrived in Latacunga and as we all were quite hungry we went to the next bakery and had a quick breakfast. After that we walked over to the "Hostal Tania" which was recommended to me.

It was exactly 8.15am when we arrived at the hostel where the Dutch owner talked me straight into joining the "Cotapaxi Tour". Firstly I declined as I was just too tired to do any tours but as I was a bit in a time rush and really wanted to see one of the highest active Volcano's in Ecuador (5.897m), I paid the 40 USD and 5 Min later I was sitting with 7 other tourist on the bus to the National Park. While we were driving to the National Park I nearly fell asleep…..but Jan and Frederik from Germany and the other tourist kept me awake with their travel stories.

After visiting the NP Museum where our tour guide told us a bit about the flora and fauna we continued our tour to the "Limpiopungo Lake". From there we could catch the first glimpse of the Volcan Cotapaxi….which was unfortunately still covered in a few clouds. Then we drove up to the car park at approx. 4.300m. From there we started hiking up to the Refugio which was on 4.840m. The hike wasn't too bad…..but as the wind was quite chilli my fingers were nearly falling off.

But when we reached the Refugio after 1 ½ hours we treated ourselves with a hot chocolate and a warm soup. And it was already quite late we continued crossing over to the glacier which must have been at an altitude of 4.900 Meters. And as soon as we arrived there the clouds cover over the peak of Cotopaxi disappeared and we could take some nice photos of the glacier and the volcano.

After a quick descent we all jumped back on the bus and were looking forward to our "belated lunch" which we had in one of the restaurants in the National Park. At about 5.30pm we drove back to Latacunga and had a beautiful view of the sunset behind Cotapaxi.

We finally arrive at the Hostel Tania at 7.15pm and the only thing I was looking forward to….was a hot shower and a bed!

The next morning, Thursday, 25.08.11 I decided to do my own trip to the most photographed lake of Ecuador, "Laguna Quilotoa". At the breakfast table I met Santiago from Spain who had the same idea. So together we walked over to the bus terminal where we took the bus to "Zumbaya" and from there we jumped on a pick-up car to the "Laguna Quilotoa". The whole trip took us 3 hours but it was an interesting trip on the local bus and as soon as we were standing at the "lookout" in front of the lake we knew why it is the most photographed lake in Ecuador. WOW….it was just an amazing view down to the huge Crater Lake with its nice turquoise colour.

We didn't want to do the whole loop as it was to be a trek of 6 hours. So we just walked for two hours as far as we came and took millions of nice pictures. On the way back we bumped into an Ecuadorian Senorita with her three Lamas and one Alpaca. We couldn't believe it when she charged us 1 USD for taking a few pictures of her.

At around 1pm we went to a family house close to the "laguna" where we had a delicious lunch with some French travellers. Unfortunatelly Santiago and I missed the bus back to Latacunga at 2pm…..but two nice Ecuadorian guys offered us a lift back to "Zumbaya". There we jumped on the next bus back to Latacunga. The three hour bus ride was again quite interesting as we had an Ecuadorian family sitting next to us and the three kids were entertaining us during the whole trip…..and all of them were sooo cute!

Back at the hostel, Santiago and I exchanged some photos and joined Frederik, Horst and two Austrian girls for dinner.

On Friday, 26.08.11, Frederik and I took the bus to BANOS at 9.30am. As Frederik and I were just chatting through the entire trip we could believe when we suddenly arrived in BANOS.