July 21, 2018 – July 23, 2018
The Quilotoa Loop is a 3 or 4 day backpack that you can do, partly on trails, partly on roads, that takes you through small indigenous towns and stunning mountain scenery. Backpackers generally do the loop staying at hostels found all along the way. We decided that instead of stashing the truck somewhere, renting gear, and trying to find places that would accept us with the dog, that we would drive the loop with our truck and camper.
We drove through more stunning countryside and interesting indigenous villages. There are several distinct ethic groups living in the Andes of Ecuador, many of which speak some variant of Quechua, which was the main language of the Inca Emprie . The style of dress varies between the peoples, the women tending to dress more traditionally than the men. Generally, the women wear full, a little lower than knee length, wool skirts, a colourful shawl and a hat, the hat being the most distinctive clothing item, to our eye, from one group to the next. The locals are often photographed by tourists, without their permission, and they don’t like feeling like “an attraction” for the most part, so we are reluctant to take photos of the people, but I wish I could show you the different costumes we saw.
In many areas, much of the Andean mountains have been cleared and are being farmed.
We arrived at the Black Sheep Inn, where we camped in the parking lot for a few days. This was one of our favourite hostels so far. Beautiful views from the decks, a yoga studio, great meals, included in the price, friendly staff and interesting fellow travellers. They even had a wood fired hot tub and sauna. We really enjoyed our time here. The hostel has been featured in many travel magazines and has also received multiple eco awards for their progressive, and responsible infrastructure.
The view from a little platform next to our camper. In the lower right you can see another lower deck that is off of the yoga studio.
The tops of the mountains across the valley, poking out at sunset.
The world’s highest altitude disc golf course.
This putt is for you, Ron.
The gardens around the hostel. All of the toilets were composting and the grey water was directed towards various ornamental plants.
We hiked a trail recommended by the hostel called the Sky Trail.
The trail took us by these thatched field huts for agriculture with a “scare crow”.
We saw fields of Lupine being grown all over in the Andes. The harvested bean is called Chocho and is often used in a ceviche type dish in place of fish.
The hike took us about 2 hours.
We reluctantly packed up (we have to keep moving if we want to make it all the way to Ushuaia), and headed to the beautiful Laguna Quilotoa. The caldera, about 3 km wide, is the collapsed remnant of a volcano, which has erupted about 8 times in the last 200,000 years, the last eruptive phase occurred in 1280 AD, emptying 11 cubic kilometres of magma. The explosions associated with this eruption created the largest ash layer in the northern Andes and was one of the largest eruptions in the world in the last 1,000 years.
Laguna Quilotoa. The beauty after the destruction.
Sorry about the wind noise in the following video….
We had planned to stay in the mountains, but someone at the hostel had told us that you could see the migrating humpback whales right from the beach in Puerto Lopez, so about 20 minutes before leaving the hostel we decided to visit Laguna Quilotoa and then head to the coast (we love the flexibility of travelling the way we are) . So instead of taking the time to hike around the lake (4 – 5 hour hike), we soaked in the view, jumped back into the truck and headed downhill to the coast.
(In this video we pass several locals walking on the road and also riding in the back of trucks. They seemed to be congregating at one particular house, maybe a funeral, maybe a wedding, maybe a “town hall” type of meeting…it is a longer video (5 minutes), but you get to see how the locals dress here. If you want to speed it up, after you hit “Play”, you can click on the settings wheel (looks like a gear) and play with the speed.)