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.