Tight-Arse Tours Inc

A blog hazard: too much stuff happens to bother writing it all down because what if you miss something?

Ummmmm, at the time of the last entry I was in Latacunga? Yeah, the yanks behind me were watching Mr and Mrs Smith on DVD, apparently tiring of Ecuador´s treaures. I wonder what they wrote in their blog that day? We were in Latacunga to visit Lake Quilotoa, some distance to the west. A private tour was offered to us for $40 per person; "too much"! we replied. A public bus ($1.25 each) dropped us in Zumbahua after another almost tediously gorgeous ascent into green hills, with the inevitable massive mountains looming above. At one stop a lady jumped aboard selling "frittaras": so this was the name of the corn-and-pork-in-a-bag dish we ate between Lago Agrio and Quito! We were ecstatic. Upon alighting from said bus we were immediately offered a ride in a ute up to the lake ($5 per person). This ride proved to be just about the highlight of the trip so far, the wind nearly freezing us (thank you Mel´s parents for my Gore-Tex jacket) but enabling many bumpy photos of...yes, the hills and mountains. A small child screamed "¡Hola!" to us as we went past and celebrated wildly when we returned in kind. At the top were a couple of hostels and the lake itself, striking green water in a volcanic caldera. The clouds formed shadowy shapes on the water as they passed. I angled for the harder of two possible walks, all the way around the rim. "Cuatro horas" said our driver: he must be a fast walker.

We tackled the walk the Melbourne way of going, so that we had the lake on our left and the surrounding scenery on our right. This latter consisted of more verdant hills and valleys, with a crevasse (what a disgusting word) running through the middle. Each few steps were thus bittersweet: we gained some more magnificent view at the cost of losing the view we had already enjoyed. Ahead we spied a large group of indigenous people and one llama (which may have been an alpaca). We had gone through a gate and feared they might attempt to charge us to pass, but all they wanted to do, every man, woman and child, was to shake our hands and say "Good morning"! to us in English. Again, there was much rejoicing when we responded in kind.

The walk was harder than we expected, "up" bits that from a distance looked manageable being less friendly once we started to walk "up" them. We were repeatedly embarrassed as locals under huge loads (some recently harvested crop in sacks, a small child or two, a horse of similar fitness to us) sprinted past us effortlessly. After something more than four hours we arrived at the starting point, relieved not to be camping out on the lake rim. I negotiated a "camioneta" back to Zumbahua (I walked into a hostel and said "Zumbahua" and was directed to a car outside; cost: $5 per person again) and we leapt onto a bus back to Latacunga ($1.25 each again). We arrived late and, not having eaten lunch stopped at the first stall for frittara ($1 per person). Just to be sure, I asked the lady what it was called, and she replied "choclomonte". The confusion continues.

Total cost of above described day (with water and snacks): $33, representing a saving of $47 on proposed private tour cost. Let´s go again tomorrow!