It didn't seem to be long enough after our night wander around beautiful Quito last night when the alarm went off at 5am this morning! Still, the early start was more than worth the trouble.
Our guide, Santiago, met us and drove us in his 4x4 the 3.5 hours up to the top of Quilitoa in the midst of Ecuador's highlands. I learnt so much from Santiago during the drive about Ecuador's geography, history and people and then what we saw when we reach our destination totally blew our minds...!
The Quilitoa laguna is a immense crater lake in the middle of a volcano that has been dormant since 1812. It changes colour from dark blue, to deep turquoise to emerald green in a matter of moments reflecting the changes in the weather and is absolutely spectacular.
We began our descent to the lake's edge after a cup of tea with a local indigenous family.
After our struggle with the altitude yesterday, Jon and I were very conscious from the outset of the fact that what goes down must come up and were very sceptical of Santiago's claims that it would take us half an hour to get down and only an hour to get back up. Still, we decided to trust him and wended our way downwards with frequent stops for photos.
On reaching the bottom, we savoured the beauty of the lake but then turned around to view the full extent of what now awaited us. A climb back up from 3,550 metres to 4,000 metres... in an hour.
In the end, we did it in 1hr 3mins and I'm very proud of myself. Santiago taught me a new approach which seems to work well for me. Walk very, very, very slowly (like pigeon steps) but NEVER stop. It's a tactic I guess the TGB Trailwalkers are very familiar with (!) and it worked wonders for me. The breathing was hard work but I never felt like I'd run out of air completely and the headache, although there, is easier than yesterday.
This is a good job as we're walking for around 6 hours tomorrow to over 5,000 metres - yikes! Still, no vomiting yet!
We then had a yummy lunch and both bought alpaca scarves from some of the local craftspeople. Jon has spotted that I'm already surgically attached to mine so expect to see it in all photos from now on!
We're now at the Papagayo Hosteria and enjoying a well earned rest in front of the log fire before our challenge tomorrow.
I'll be in touch asap to let you know how we get on (and to hopefully post a few photos). Missing you!
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