Another early morning being up at 0500 hours and three hours later waiting at the border to leave Peru and enter Ecuador at 1000 hours. At 1700 hours we arrived at the Gran Hotel (not Grand) and more or less fell into bed. The hotel was a converted old merchants house built in 1948 with the central courtyard covered over with the area used as a lounge and dining area.
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| The hotel lounge and dining area |
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| The serving area |
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| Items round the hotel, Why, I do not know. |
After the rain had stopped the next day I went for a walk around the city to find many old buildings and went onto the roof of the cathedral where the views were quite good.
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| The cathedral and views from the roof |
After the rain had stopped the next day I went for a walk around the city to find many old buildings and went onto the roof of the cathedral where the views were quite good.
After one full day in Cuenca it as another full days travel to Chugchilan where we arrived at 2115 hours (altitude
3,200 metres/(10,500 feet) due mainly to the driver losing the way and costing us about 45 minutes then the condition of the road up over the mountains being very bad with rain, clouds and mudslides. At least there was a meal waiting for us when we arrived at the hostel! The morning after arriving there the rest of the group did a eight kilometre trek, taking about seven hours from the Quilotoa crater back to the hostel Cloud Forest Hostel. I went up to the crater to have a look at it but did not do the trek as it had been described as ‘easy with a hard bit at the end.’ Mostly this was a correct description except that it was the rainy season (it did rain) and the route was wet and slippery with the ladies in the party having to be carried over one swollen and fast flowing river while the last part of the trek was uphill, steep slippery and very difficult. It was just as well that I did not go as I doubt that my knee would have stayed the whole route and I would have been a burden to the others. One of the group, who supposedly had a bad knee, walked away from the others and out of sight of the guide which apparently made them all concerned as there were various tracks and a difficult walk. They were not impressed by his attitude and with him not staying with everyone else. It just proved to me how selfish the person really was, with no consideration for anyone else.
Quilotoa is a water filled caldera and the most western
volcano in the Ecuadorian Andes. The three kilometre (two miles) wide caldera was formed by the collapse of this volcano following a catastrophic eruption about 800 years ago. The caldera is now a 250 metres (820 feet) deep crater lake which has a greenish color as a result of dissolved minerals. The caldera rim has a maximum elevation of 3915 metres (12,844 feet). The lake surface is at 3,500 metres (11,483 feet).
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| The Caldera |
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| Me and some of the group |
Returning to Chugchilan I went walking round the village where the church could be found in the main square and the older people were being given a weekly food ration, as I found out later.
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| The village church |
Village people
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| The Cloud Forest Hostel |
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The view from my room
As we left the following morning, in the light, I was able to see what the road conditions were like. There were many small mudslides across the road with one major one which had taken out half the road. The scenery was stupendous with high mountains and green pastures, a very agricultural place. There were not many llamas to be seen, not the place for them so it seems, but I did see a few with some having packs on their backs.
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| The damaged road |
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| Views of the area |
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