Banos, Quilotoa volcanic lake & Cotopaxi

Banos is Ecuador's adventure centre with a wide variety of activities available to do in the area. After a couple of days of rest and exploring the coffee shops in the town we were ready for some action. The first day trip was to Quilotoa volcano which was three hours away. Our guide Marcus explained to us about the different trees and grasses along the way and the effect of global warming on this area. We stopped at a shop in the local community to see the colourful artwork and face masks. Once we arrived at Quilotoa we got to appreciate it's beautiful lake. This lake was formed by an internal explosion of the volcano which caused the crater to collapse into itself forming a beautiful lake. The water of the lake has various green/blue colours due to the minerals in the water. It really was stunning. The pictures we saw of the lake beforehand didn't show it's real beauty. We walked down the crater edge to the lake and rented a kayak for twenty minutes. It was Rob's first time to kayak and what a place to learn to kayak; in a volcano lake.

The following day I went white water rafting while Rob went mountain biking. The rapids weren't very big however it was still great fun because the water was very fast. It was nice to be rafting again.

One of the things we wanted to do on our travels was to climb higher than 5,000 metres above sea level and Cotopaxi Volcano gave us this perfect opportunity. It was an active volcano standing at an altitude of 5800 metres. The top 650 metres has a glacier that required extra training and equipment to climb but you can climb to the base of the glacier at 5180 metres above sea level which is what we aimed to do. We had been acclimatised for a while however in the last two weeks we have being staying in lower altitudes (around 1,000 - 1,500 metres) so we weren't sure if the altitude would affect us again. Luckily it didn't and breathing was fine once we walked at normal pace and not faster. Having said that the hike was not easy. The first half of the hike was difficult on our calf muscles as there was very little grip on the volcanic sandy ground. The second half of the hike was difficult for a different reason. The wind was very strong and cold in our face so at times we took one step forward and then were blown two steps back. However we eventually reached the glacier to take some lovely pictures.

The following day after watching France win the World Cup final we went to the 'swing at the end of the world's for more touristy photos. Banos was a nice place for us to base ourselves for a few days. It was a nice relaxed town but close to some great adventures. Next we go back to Quito to meet Una again before going to the Amazon for four days.Read more