Volcano Antisana and Quilotoa Crater Lake

First, check out our new “Videos” page at the link at the top right hand side of the page.  We will post all of our videos in this one place, adding new ones at the top and letting the old ones move down.

It has been hard to keep up with postings on the blog. We’ve been a bit busy on buses and airplanes. We are now in Peru and we still have some more jungle photos and video from Ecuador to post soon. Two of the lasting impressions that we will have from Ecuador are the biodiversity of the country, one of the most diverse in the world, and the natural beauty at every turn.

Here are some pictures from our last weekend in Ecuador. JM’s good friend Andres took us to Volcan Antisana near Quito with his wife Rosanna and almost 4-year-old daughter Amelia. Antisana is a volcano of the northern Andes, in Ecuador. It is the fourth highest volcano in Ecuador, at 18,871 ft. (5,752m), and is located 50 km SE of the capital city of Quito. We really enjoyed spending the day with them and the volcano and surrounding areas were breathtakingly beautiful. Thanks for the great day! We’re sorry that we didn’t get a picture of you to post here.

Here are some pictures from our Sunday trip to Quilotoa Crater Lake. Quilotoa is a dormant crater lake located high in the Western Cordilleras of the Andes, 35 km west of Latacunga. The caldera is oval shaped with a diameter of 2.5 kilometers and the steep crater walls drop in some parts more than 300 meters to the water level at 3500m. The lake is 240m deep and its water is alkaline and no fish live there. The lake itself was spectacular and the drive there and back involved the typically beautiful views of the Ecuadorian Andean landscape.

After the hike down to the lake, which was really more of a slide down steep sandy hills most of the way, all of us except Kelli rode back up on mules/horses. Local indigenous people walk the animals down and then walk beside them as they carry the tourists back up. It looked pretty tough for the animals, which didn’t please Ainsley at all. Our guide claimed that each mule only does it once each day, but that was hard to believe. I was most amazed by the husband and wife pair that walked up with Jack and me. As you will see in the pictures below the wife was carrying a young baby with her the entire time. Even though they are acclimated to the altitude it was a tough clime, I can only imagine what it would be like with a baby. Furthermore, at one point she shifted the baby so that she could breast feed it and afterward shifted it again to her back. The US has trouble at times with breastfeeding in public; this woman did it while climbing out of a crater lake to earn a few dollars. Amazing!