After a couple of tedious days is Quito city with the constant worry to be robbed off my belongings, leaving the city the first time and driving into the Andean countryside was somehow spectacular and reminded me why I came to South America. We past gorgeous and menacing volcanoes on the way and were treated with superb views onto Cotopaxi and Chimborazo, Ecuadors highest volcano with an altitude above 6300m. We visited an indigenous market, where Andean farmers sold everything from lamas, baby cows, goats, sheep, pigs, chicken and of course guinipigs! Although the Ecuadorian people are beautiful in their traditional clothing with colorful ponchos and beautiful babies bound to their mother’s backs, you could see the hard labor of their lives written in their faces.
We then drove up, up, up through dirt roads on an altitude of about 4000m, mountains still climbing higher around is. The destination was Volcano Quilotoa at an altitude of 3800m, from where we descended to the crater lake 300m below. The vegetation to the lake was extremely dry, mostly covered with little bushes and scrubs growing in volcanic sand. Once we reached the bottom, a thunderstorm rolled in and we were poured with buckets of water. Being surrounded by a rim of rocks 300m above you can make you feel a little claustrophobic, especially when 300m ascend feels worse than 1300m ascend in the Swiss Alps due to altitude sickness. My head was throbbing and I was huffing and puffing like an old engine, feeling at times I am going to faint soon and will be captured inside the crater forever (they do offer mules and horses to carry you out of the crater, but I am an experienced hiker after all and could have not taken the shame…). Having it made back to the top, we had a lovely indigenously prepared sopa de patatas, the best meal ever considering how freezing cold we were!
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