Latacunga and Quilotoa Lake

Latacunga was our third stop in Ecuador. The city is mainly used as a gateway to the Quilotoa Crater Lake, located at approx. 3920m, and is - again - said to be not safe outside of a little tourist area. We‘ve spent to nights there and luckily found a cozy little restaurant with a courtyard and heaters 💪🏼, as well as a mexican restaurant serving fajitas with a huge vegetable plate - Alina was very very happy to finally have some tasty vegetables again!!
The bus ride to the Quilotoa lake was also an experience by itself, as it was a slow bus, stopping randomly along the way to pick up many indigenous folk from the andes region. Slower than scheduled, but so very interesting to see all these very characteristic faces and their traditional way of dressing!
The lake itself was very very beautiful, too. Instead of just heading down to the lake level, we took the 10.3 km route around it - a nice workout with some slopes of 32% and beautiful views of both the crater lake and the surrounding area. We even saw (or let‘s say we are 95% sure that we did 😉) our very first Andean Condor, the largest flying bird in the world and sadly an endangered species. Truly a majestic sight!
And now that we are acclimatised to the hights, we head off deeper into ( or up to) the andes mountains for some more hiking 💪🏼Meer informatie