Quilotoa Lake

Between the Cloud Forest and the Amazon trips, Mum, Dad and I booked a trip to Quilotoa Lake. It's in a volcanic crater and due to the minerals around, is salty. We were picked up at 8am, and driven south for about 3 hours. We drove past Cotopaxi (a big volcano), but it was hidden in cloud (both ways). We did finally manage to see Cotopaxi on our last day in Quito, so photos here just to show it!

The route took us up into the Andes, and it was interesting to see so much farming on steep slopes really high up.  

About 12 km from the lake itself, the car stopped. Nothing dramatic, just, quietly died and wouldn't start again.  After some minor investigation, our driver flagged down a passing car and begged a tow to the nearest town, which was luckily only a few minutes away.  Fabrizio organized us a taxi to the lake and said he would pick us up at 2 to get us back in time for the kick off meeting for the Amazon trip.

Pretty cacti in flower by the road as we waited.

The crater and the lake were lovely, though I think I have been spoiled by Crater Lake in the USA, which was much larger and more impressive.

We walked down a ways but, with our deadline for getting back and seeing how steep it would be climbing back up, we decided not to go the whole 1.7km down. We stopped for a picnic lunch of cold pizza leftover from last night's dinner (accompanied by a hopeful dog), and then headed back up.

Up at the top in the town we had a hot chocolate and waited for our lift. And waited. At 10 past 2 I tried calling him. I had successfully called his phone before we parted ways in the morning but I couldn't get through. After a while I tried the hotel that organised the trip, and again couldn't get through. By half past we were beginning to get a bit worried!

A passing tourist told us there was a bus stop not far away that would get us back to Quito, so dad went off to investigate that.  Then we begged a phone from a local and we were finally able to get through to our driver who was only 5 minutes away! The petrol pump had died and they needed to drain his tank to remove it to access the pump.

Some frazzlement, but all was good in the end.

Bellavista Cloud Lodge - Ecuador

This place was recommended to me by my friend Nick from work. We had an overnight there and it was amazing. Up in the cloud forest, miles from civilization. The owners worked very hard to make this place a safe haven and refuge for wildlife.

http://www.bellavistacloudforest.com/

All the photos can be found here, a selection of the best are below.

It was about a 2 hour drive from Quito, half of it on dirt track straight up a mountainside into the cloud forest. We drove past 'the equator monument' which we understand to be a) just a tourist trap and b) not actually on the equator.

Driving past the Equator monument.

The lodge itself has a variety of accommodations. Mum, Dad and I shared the Upstairs Bamboo lodge which was basic but absolutely fine. The food was good and the staff friendly.

We arrived for breakfast and were then out for a pretty darn strenuous walk. Not only was it quite uppy-downy on rough paths and up a stream/waterfall, we also had the altitude to contend with, having spent the past week at sea level in the Galapagos. Dad and particularly Mum coped admirably, including some rock climbing!

An unexpected scorpion

We had no clue what this was.

Pretty fungi

A waterfall to climb

Anne of the jungle

We didn't actually manage to see very much wildlife on the trek. There were birds around, but up in the canopy and not easy to see. There were also about 10 of us, and several of the people were chatting loudly and incessantly about non-rainforest related things, which annoyed the crap out of me. I wasn't in the best of moods by the end, which I attribute to the altitude, the noisy people, the physical exertion and ongoing diarrhea.

Back to the lodge for a late-ish lunch, which was interrupted by a Tayra stealing the bananas left out for the incredibly rare (and new to science) Olinguito (which we didn't see).

Olinguito that we didn't see, but there was a poster of one so ....

I skipped the afternoon walk to have a nap, and mum did too.  After our nap we went to spend some time staring at the hummingbirds in the carpark!

Sooooooooo many hummingbirds! And so unafraid of people.  The lodge puts out sugar water for them and it attracts loads of them.  When you hold a cup of sugar water in your hand they come and land on your fingers to drink. As you can see, we were all delighted by it, just a little bit.

Nighttime brought many, many moths to the Lodge, attracted by the lights. We had a bit of a wander to see if we could see anything interesting by torchlight. We did see a pair of eyes reflecting in the dark that we are told was probably a possum, and some other stuff.

E.T-esque night view of the Lodge

Moths attracted to the windows distracting us from eating

Ginormous bastard moth (not it's official name)

Dad, looking for stuff in the dark.

Froglett we found in the dark

In the morning we were up at the crack of dawn to see many of the moths resting up. This regular concentration of moths and insects also attracts many birds in the early morning, and it wasn't long before the moth numbers were drastically reduced! This classed as the morning 'walk', but basically we didn't leave the carpark as all the wildlife came to us!

This one was special, but I can't remember it's name.

Acrobatics to catch the moths

Nunbird - extremely unusual to see it at the lodge. People were very excited.

A gentler stroll after breakfast allowed us to see a few bits and bobs. Our guide was using his mobile phone with recordings of local birds to try and attract them. He didn't know that I have an app installed for identifying birds that also has recordings of them.  I played a recording of the Golden Headed Quetzal, a very rare bird in the area, and it was absolutely hilarious to see his reaction!  He was soooooo excited!  He took the joke very well.  Then later, we actually got to see 2 of them!!!! :-)

Monkey Tail Fern

Golden Headed Quetzal (female)