I'M AT: Cabanas Quilotoa, Quilotoa. A cold, ramshackle converted barn... AND The Black Sheep Inn, Chugchilán. A hyper-ecofriendly hostal but with ridiculously high prices. Good food though.
For the past three days and nights I´ve travelled from Quito > Quilotoa > Chugchilán > Siquisli, and am now in Baños, there´s a partially exploded volcano over my shoulder, and it´s just started raining.
Quilotoa is a long-extinct volcano that last exploded in the late 1700s. The eruption created an enormous crater which filled with beautiful green freshwater, and its ripples dive like drakes amongst the surrounding countryside.
The bus from Latacunga to Quilotoa was quite ridiculous, perched on the edge of foaming gorges, patchwork mountains. Hard to believe that cultivation is possible at that sort of elevation. Approached from the bus, we checked out and subsequently stayed in a really cold place called Cabañas Quilotoa, owned by Humberto Latacunga (no inbreeding there, then).
The tap water was recycled piss, I think - but they served up some nice hot grub and put on a show of dancing boys and girls, and we drank beer and played poker. I met a nice couple called Steve and Suzanne from Worcester whom I´m meeting up with in about an hour.
That first afternoon we walked to the bottom of the crater and back up again, about half an hour down but a good hour back up. I tumbled over loose sand on the way back, red faced with exertion, and was widely mocked by some lava-faced French who suggested that, haha, had I not seen it?, haha, I should use, the, the, the solid route to my left, which a small mountain girl was breezily ascending.
Thanks.
Made it back up but vowed not to do the hike from the crater to Chugchilán, the next stop (about 22km from Quilotoa). So got the truck the next morning instead. We arrived at the Black Sheep Inn for two nights and on that same morning hiked to the bottom of the canyon below, and then upstream, Steve and Suzanne shared their lunch with me (I´d been pounding my clothes on an old fashioned stone and had neglected to sort out a pack-up). The river forked right, we took a smaller river, jumping across to save our feet from drowning, and then I - or Steve, I´m still not sure - lost the map.
So we kind of made it up from there, and some of the ledges were ridiculous, a small sideways step to the death below.
We climbed up a pounding steep loose bank to negotiate a waterfall, found ourselves on a plateau overlooking the canyon with only a lonely goatherd for company, asked him for directions, then decided against taking them, got chased by a snarling farmdog, before finally climbing the steep paths between farmed fields to emerge caked in blood and vomit, reeling from the agony.
And then collapsed back at the hostal - about which, in summary, a hippy dream of sorts, but a thriving business, a permaculture, completely vegetarian, sauna, honours system for the banana bread and other organic snacks, composting loos, llamas and dogs and cats and swans gadding about. It was great, but I also was quite glad to leave in the end - it was expensive, and I felt like a walking swearbox, afraid to frown.
Wednesday morning we hired horses and a group of seven or eight of us rode to the Cheese Factory (a bit small and nondescript and the buggers left immediately after we rode off), then higher up to the Cloud Forest, had lunch, a small tour of medicinal plants, before a gallop back down the hills, a real race between the horses. I´d been kicked in the knee in the morning, by a mule in front, but finished the day only with a really sore arse.
It was my first time on a horse and I absolutely loved it.
So I travelled here, to Baños, today, via a crazy market with a REAL snake oil salesman, and where you could buy a small cute puppy for $0.50, with Katy from Utah, who is only six days younger than me. She´s an outdoors type and her enthusiasm scares me slightly. Our paths diverged in Ambato, and she´s gone to Guaranda but is meeting Steve, Suzanne and me on Saturday to do the Devil´s Nose train ride in Riobamba.
We´re meeting at Simon Bolivar´s old house. He probably pissed into his own drinking water as well.
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