Waltzing into Latacunga (Admin – she means shuffling) for a couple of days reminded us of Quito – crowded, busy, noisy and ultimately frenetic.
Latacunga is a place, a bit like Hull or maybe Coventry back home (no offense to either of these places!), that really you’d probably only visit because you needed to – it is certainly not a tourist destination in its own right! However, Latacunga is the place to come to if you want to make your own way to either Quilotoa lake (as we did), or to Cotopaxi volcano (which we didn’t).
So that is how we found ourselves with a spare day in Latacunga.
After having spent the morning sorting a few logistics for our overnight trip to Quilotoa we had the afternoon free. Unfortunately, the ‘sights’ of Latacunga don’t take more than about 1/2 hour to see, so we eventually found ourselves a mediocre bar and whiled away the remainder of the afternoon over a cheap beer or two! Nonetheless, it was interesting to experience a typical large Ecuadorian town, see a bit of how people live, and then head off to somewhere nicer!!
So the following day we headed back to the bus station and caught a bus to take us up to the dormant Quilotoa volcano.
Now you can do a multiday hike between the villages surrounding the crater, but we are neither fit enough, nor acclimatised enough to the 4,000m altitude to contemplate that. Plus Richard’s arthritic hip really wouldn’t stand it. So instead we plumped for a hike down to the lake itself from the edge of the crater one day, and a hike (Admin – she means shuffle, again!) around the crater edge the following morning.
Arriving into Quilotoa village could not have been more different to Latacunga. We’d made the acquaintance of an American women on the bus journey, but arriving into Quilotoa, the three of us seemed to be the only visitors to what is, ostensibly, these days, a tourist village. The place was like a ghost town – loads of hostels and restaurants, but no sign of anyone; the contrast between the two could not have been more different, what-the-dickens was going on?
Eventually saw a handful of other tourists, mainly coming in on guided tours, taking a few photos and then leaving again.
After the obligatory coffee, we headed down into the ‘mouth’ of the Volcano.
Hiking back up was far harder though than heading down, the altitude, steepness of the track and powdery surface was lung-busting. The saving grace was that Richard never complained once, he’s such a great guy (Admin – I think someone’s edited your post Rebecca)!
Come the evening, when the two of us ventured out for dinner at the ungodly hour of 6.45pm, we struggled to find any of the restaurants still open for us to get some dinner. Unsurprisingly there was no-one else in there, until shock horror, the presumably only other tourist in town, also showed up (probably because it was the only place to eat)! Still, Richard grabbed the opportunity to try Guinea Pig (Cuy in Spanish) for the first time.
Once back in the ‘magical’ (Admin – steady!) city of Latacunga, Richard decided to be ill, which meant leaving a day later for Baños…which leads onto a whole other story!
Stay tuned peeps!
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