Central highlands - Quilotoa loop

After leaving Quito, I and Wei headed for south, and our first stop was Latacunga, where we would catch our bus to Quilotoa loop.

Quilotoa loop is a circle of area where situates many small indigenous villages. And there is the famous Quilotoa Crater Lake, with its emerald blue and green colours, it attracts quite a lot tourists. But the loop it siturated in a high altitude, which is usally above 3000m, so the weather is freezing here.

Orginally, I wanted to do biking around the loop, but after considering my physical strength and the possibility of renting a bike, I finally chose to take a bus instead.

We slept in Latacunga for a night, and then we headed off to Quilotoa village on last Thursday morning. After about 2hours on the bus, with the splendid view, we arrived the village in the early afternoon. And immediately treked down the beautiful lake.

The path going down the lake.

Going down was not a tough job, the only problem was the road was not paved and sometimes it was just like on the beach, so it was very slippery. I was really afraid that I would slide downhill.

The emerald blue Quilotoa lake and a donkey.

But the view of the Quilotoa lake was really breath-taking. It was so quiet and shining with green and blue colours. And it also had different kinds of beauty throughout the day. During the afternoon, it shined to its fullest with all its colours. When it came to the late afternoon, when all the mists were coming, the lake was just like a shy girl who covered herself with a white veil. So I really could not help staring at her for all the moments. It was so beautiful.

After about 45mins of trekking down, we reached a small peninsula where we picniced with a spectacular view of the lake

Two kayaks on the quiet Quilotoa lake.

Then we continued our path until down to the beach of the lake, where we found that we could kayak by $2 per person. The experiences of kayaking over the Quilotoa was incredible (although I was so afraid of the kayak would flip, as I could not swim), and we use about 45mins to kayak from the beach to another side of the lake. As there were no other tourists at that moment, and we could not see any other kayaks or boats on the lake, it just seemed like the whole beautiful lake belonged to us.

Kayaking on Quilotoa lake. Although kayaking made my pants wet and my ass was just like sitting in the middle of water, I still recommended kayaking in Quilotoa.

Then we needed to hike back to the village, with the altitude(3850m), going back was a really tough job. I almost stoped to rest for every 10seconds! As it was getting dark and foggy, I just hoped we were able to get back to the village before dark.

The beauty of Quilotoa lake with a white veil.

Luckily, we finally arrived the village safely and were able to find a lovely family run lodge, Hostal Chosita. The 19 years old girl Blanca is very beautiful and cooked excellent. Although the night at Quilotoa was freezing, we had an excellent time here.

The charming indigenous girl, Blanca.