Laguna Quilotoa

The way to get to Quilotoa was very confusing. Some people said you need to take 2 buses and a taxi, other said that it was better to get there with an organised tour. Fortunately they were wrong and with only two buses and 4 hours later I got to Quilotoa. I was very happy that the Argentinans couple joined me in this new trip. The village is little, very very little, in 5 minutes you can visit it all. We found a wonderful hostel with a chimney in every room (very useful in the evening). We put our stuff in the rooms and we went to see the lagoon. Walking in the village, I didn't expect to see the lagoon just after few metres. This blue-green lagoon is situated inside a volcanic crater. There are many hiking paths in this area. We decided to take the short (but challenging) path that lead us to the lagoon itself. The path was sandy and falling was very easy. For some people was quite difficult because of the altitude (we are at 3500m), but I'm already acclimatise. During the trek many local children were running down with horses to pick up tourists to the top of the crater. After few days of rain, we got luck with the weather, but because of the altitude it was very cold. 

The day after we walked on the rim of the crater. My friends had to take the bus  at 1pm, so we just walked one third of the circuit and we came back to the village. The hike wasn't that difficult, so after I left my friends, I started to hike on the other side. My idea was to hike till the highest point at 3800m (one third of the circuit and then come back to the village. This was the plan, but once I got to the top, I was quite afraid to go down from the same path. Walking down on the sand on a few cm path with two vertiginous cliff on the sides was too dangerous for me. So I decided to walk the whole circuit to get back to the town. It took me about 5 hours to finish the hike. Some parts were easy, some a little bit hard, some were very slippery, sometimes clouds completely covered everything and I had few minutes of "what am I doing here?", but then clouds went away leaving me alone with the view of the lagoon and a cold wind on my face. 

I got back to the hostel, I light the fire, I took a hot shower,  then I laid on the bed, too tired to move, but not enough to fall asleep. I took my tablet to read a book. I choose for a book written by Dominique Lapierre "One dollar, one thousand kilometres" (I'm not sure this is the right English title), where he writes about his trip from France to Mexico in 1949 at only 18 years old with 25 dollars. This is one of those books that every backpackers (but not only) should read.. 

Cloud are hiding the path