Lalo y Mago: Hiking the Quilotoa Loop

Maggie here!
We've settled into a pretty chill routine volunteering on a small family farm near Baños, Ecuador in the last 8 days. But, before we arrived here we fit in a gorgeous 4 day hike in the mountains between here and Quito. Laguna Quilotoa is a large crater lake formed in a collapsed volcano and surrounded by incredible mountain views, rivers and canyons, and several very small villages that have hostels for hikers passing through. We were excited about the idea of doing several long hikes in a row and getting to sleep in a bed each night rather than a tent and decided to go for it.

After our days in Mindo, we took 5 buses to get to a town called Latacunga where we met up with Emily, a new friend from our hostel in Quito. We spent the evening at Hostal Tiana which was chock-full of other hikers who had heard about storing their bags there too.

Setting out on the first day of our hike

When we left the next day, we took just our small daypacks with us, stored our main packs in their dungeon like luggage locker and set off for the bus to Sigchos. Our hostel in Latacunga had provided us with photocopied directions for our first day of hiking, complete with grainy photos and instructions like "Walk to the left hand corner of the town" and "Follow the 3rd small path on your right when the road takes a second left at 2 trees". We had been assured that we would certainly get lost at some point and we were ready.

I want one of these keychains - wish it could fit in a pocket!

Our first day of hiking (about 4-5 hours) brought us to a tiny town called Isinliví where we stayed at a hostel called Llullu Llama. Another one of the great things about this hike is each hostel includes dinner and breakfast in their booking price. Llullu Llama was an insanely cozy oasis, and we had a great time meeting other hikers at the dinner table and around the fire that night. And, for this week's episode of "It's a Small World" - there was a hiker there that night who used to work with EJ at Goodwill in Austin. Go figure.

In the morning after another killer meal at Llullu Llama (and hanging out with their llama and St Bernard who are best friends), we headed out to Chugchilan. This day ended being our favorite - we hiked down into a canyon and back up the other side as we had done the day before, crossing over a log bridge, meeting many farm animals along the way and chatting with kids who were playing near their families' farm. The views were stunning!

Making friends along the way

A church we encountered in one of the valleys

On the third day we hiked from our Cloud Forest Hostel (where the beds had fleece sheets and about 5 fleece blankets on them - good for the cold but bad for static electricity) to our final destination of Laguna Quilotoa. This day, we had a fourth member in our party that we had met at the hostels, but despite the extra person, we still managed to get lost 3 times. We asked for directions along the way from farmers we passed by, and when we were nearly there (or so we thought) the kindest man actually followed after us for probably 20 minutes to tell us we were going the wrong way. There were tons of steep sandy uphills and high altitude water breaks...and 8 hours later I was so happy when we finally made it to the crater and ultimately the hostels clustered on one side.

It was such a rewarding 3 days - we were exhausted, sunburned and satisfied. Even though we met other hikers each night at the hostels, we were mostly alone in our small group while hiking. It was so cool to be off the beaten path enough to not encounter tourists all day long, to actually get lost because you didn't have a decent map or GPS, and to be wandering in and out of farm land. We learned along the way that even though people talk about "The Quilotoa Loop" there isn't really one official route, and different hostels and locals give out different directions. A lot of the time we were walking on what seemed to be paths used by farmers or animals, not well-marked trails.

After a night in Quilotoa where we gratefully didn't die from smoke inhalation in our bedroom (questionable wood burning stove in the room), we headed back to Latacunga and then on to Baños.