Fourth and final Shameless Archive Padding Exercise installment for Ecuador. In case you're wondering it's called Chapter 3 and not Chapter 4 because the first two posts here were originally mass-emailed at the same time; so this was the third missive despite being the fourth installment.
Since we last spoke, I have spent three days in a remote village nestled in the mountains a few hours south and then a few more hours west of Quito. The name of this village is Chugchilan, and aside from a spectacular setting it boasts a population of approximately 100 people and, perched on a hillside in its outskirts, if a village can be said to have outskirts, an eco-lodge of unsurpassed awesomeness.
The village can be reached two ways, as it is at the far end of a big looping road that links a series of villages that are collectively known in the tourist lingo as the "Quilotoa Loop", so named because the chief attraction along the road is Laguna Quilotoa, a breathtaking azure volcanic crater lake sitting way up at the highest point of the mountains at about 4300 meters. One way of getting to Chugchilan involves three hours on paved highway and an hour descending a rather bumpy dirt road, and is, if you were to look at the loop on a map, technically the long way around; for this reason, the other way is the way we took. This way, it turns out, features about 25 minutes on a paved road, and then four hours bumping along precarious mountain roads in the back of a bus traveling at an alarming speed. You can add an additional half hour if, say, your bus stops to change a tire at any point. It was, after the two and a half our ride from Quito to the loop´s beginning in the town of Latagunga, a long, uncomfortable ride, but the scenery along the way made it well worth it until the tire-change decimated our momentum at the 4 hour mark. I suppose I should mention that a pair of American girls (Teach for America teachers working in south Texas) whom I had met at my hostel in Quito were traveling with me, which is why I'm saying "we" all the time.
You can imagine our relief when we arrived at our destination [the Black Sheep Inn - ed.] and found it to be, simply, awesome: aside from ultra-sustainable design (it was, after all, an eco lodge), it featured beautiful rooms, unbeatable views of the facing canyon/plateau/mountains, three excellent veggie meals a day including a packed lunch for those going on excursions, a sauna, a giant deck, llamas, and plentiful information about and logistical support for the many hikes in the region.
The morning after our arrival, we began with a short hike to the ridge above the property, to acclimatize to the altitude (the village was, I think, at about 3500m). Features of this hike included the apparition of a guardian dog part way along, who scouted our trail for the remainder of our walk; a nice view into the next valley over; and a descent down a road on which at least half the village´s population was parked, watching their cattle graze by the roadside. All in all a good introduction to the region.
That afternoon, sadly, one of the Americans (B., for future reference) fell ill, and so she was in no shape to join the other girl, A., and I on a second short hike, down to the plateau not far from the inn. The plateau was inexplicably flat considering the mountainous surroundings, and was, not surprisingly, entirely farmland. Highlights of this one included a bajillion rows of purple-flowering pea plants; an encounter with a herd of sheep in a gulley on the way there; the view from the far side of the plateau down into an impressive canyon; and the farmer we passed on the way back tending his crops clad only in a zip-up sweatshirt, not zipped.
The next day we decided to do a longer hike to a nearby cloud forest, guided by a cool 18 year old local named R. [names have been excised out of consideration for folks' privacy - ed.]. B., alas, was still down for the count; our little group was rounded out by a somewhat reserved Virginian named B. who had been a figure skater and was now in college studying public relations or something along those lines. R. didn't mess around; he took us up the shortcut to the same ridge we had meandered to the previous day, and from there straight up further to the top of the next (and highest) range, beyond which was a rolling landscape of paramó (sort of high-altitude scrubland) and farmland. Hiking uphill at high altitude is not, of course, all that straightforward: aside from the exertion of walking uphill all the time it takes forever to catch your breath in the thin air. Traversing the plateau, we descended the far side of the mountain straight into cloud forest, which is kind of like jungle except less hot, populated with different flora, and positively dripping with moss. Highlight here was the numerous ridiculously amazing orchids just, you know, growing there in the jungle. It wasn't even orchid season, either (I can only imagine what _that_ must be like). Then we walked all the way back, with a whole lot of downhill this time.
On our third day we tackled the Big Hike, the famous one, the one we came for; from Laguna Quilotoa back to Chucgchilan. B. was back in action by this point, and we were accompanied by four others from the lodge. We hired a truck to take us up to the lake, and our guide M., R.'s dad, incidentally, had us going at a serious clip right off the bat. First up, walking to and then half-way around the indescribably beautiful lake. Wow. Holy smokes. That´s about all the describing I'll do, except to add that if you've ever been to Santorini, then think of that curving cliffside but close the whole circle, and take away all the buildings, and add 4300m of altitude, and you´ll have a pretty good picture of the crater. Then down the crater's outer slope, down, down, and more down for several hours, through paramó, near-vertical farms, and sand (inexplicably), on a very scrambly dirt-and-dust trail to the top of the canyon we'd seen the first day, where we had lunch. That's when the real fun began: the trail resumed as a very narrow ditch that quickly deepened into a 15-foot deep trench winding its way down the canyon side. It opened up now and again into sections that were more or less a path midway up a cliff, with nothing really to cling to. This went on for about 45 minutes, with one particularly exposed stretch of cliff-side insanity that really and truly gave me the willies. It was disheartening to be focusing on not succumbing to vertigo and suddenly come across a trio of locals practically skipping along in the other direction, utterly unconcerned. But I persevered, and we all made it to the bottom, and were thrilled right up to the point where it became obvious that we would now have to ascend the other side of the canyon. And so we began the final stretch, an hour of uphill, some of it steep path straight up the hillside, though most on rather more gradual (but possibly more grueling) cart paths and eventually road, emerging exhausted but triumphant back in the middle of the village and heading straight for the beer fridge in the inn upon our return. The two American girls and I, once we had recovered a little, then got into a 4x4 for the very scenic but much smoother trip back the "long" way to Latacunga (the start of the loop), where we had decided to go to avoid the alternative of boarding a bus bound the bumpy way at 3am that night.
That brings us to yesterday, which, aside from a brief visit to a nearby market town and the departure of the girls for the coast, was blessedly uneventful.
And now I'm back in Quito, taking it easy as it rains outside, and coming to terms with the fact that tomorrow at 6am I´m on a flight home. I´ll refrain from eulogizing, though, or doing any kind of summing up. It´s nap time, anyway.
Originally published via email, July 3, 2009.
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