The Quilatoa Loop

An afternoons activity
The shower wall - outside
The view whilst doing your business
Quilatoa Lake
Me :-)

The guide books make travelling into the Andes, off the Pan American Highway, sound oh so complicated but the scenery was supposed to be breathtaking and when I got speaking to an Irish guy that had just travelled back from the Loop and he said it was so beautiful it almost made him cry I thought that I would have to give it a go. It turned out to not be so complicated but it was a gruelling 4 hour bus journey to Chugchilan, where I would stay for 2 nights. Gruelling due to the slowness of the bus due to the poor up keep of the roads but the vistas were amazing - words cannot describe the shear beauty and grandeur so you will have to wait for the photos to see if you agree with me. The bus was full of indegenoius peoples, so full the ones standing had to duck when we passed a police car, who mostly survive from subsistance farming in the area. The lands are all farmed with terraced sides of mountains, as high as you can see or lopsided animal pens due to the steepness of the hills, with the bus having to beep its horn on numerous occasions to shift the pigs, cows or llamas in the middle of the road. The bus also serves as the school bus with many children getting on the bus in Sigchos, all eating ice creams, and then getting off the bus at various locations along the route - many getting off even though there was no sign of any kind of habitation. My accomodation was the Black Sheep Inn, an eco friendly inn, with composting toilets and bottled walled shower cubicles, perched on top of a hill with magnificent views across a canyon on the surrounding mountains. This was also my base for visiting Quilatoa and its crater lake - a lake formed in the base of an old volcano, that sparkles like the ocean but at 3200m. The guide books need re writing to not put tourists off visitng this magnificent area, the landscape has been the best so far in Ecuador.