Lake Titicaca

Whether visiting Peru or Bolivia, it is definitely worth taking the time to visit Lake Titicaca. The lake extends into both countries and has several islands with Incan ruins that are thousands of years old. Obviously, we visited from the Bolivian side of the lake and we visited both Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) as well as Isla de la Luna (Island of the Moon), which were fascinating. There are several tour companies that will take you out to the islands via boat or hydrofoil and it is even possible to spend the night on Sun Island. Our trip out onto the lake started out a little choppy as a single rain cloud seemed to follow us out to the island. We even saw a waterspout at one point and had to take cover inside of the cabin of the boat. This week’s Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, words that have two T’s, we decided to look back on our time on Lake Titicaca. We saw many interesting things during our time in Bolivia, but visiting the ruins on the lake was certainly one of the highlights of our time there.

Cruising on Lake Titicaca
Temple on Sun Island with Moon Island in the Distance on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia
Ruins on the Island
Start of the Waterspout

 

Laguna Quilotoa in Ecuador

Volcanoes are a common sight when you visit Ecuador and we decided to visit several of them during our visit. Although many of them are still active, Quilotoa hasn’t erupted for several hundred years. One if its last eruptions was violent enough to create the enormous crater or caldera that has since filled with water that is 800 feet deep. You can either hike around the rim of the crater or hike down the steep trail that takes you down to the lake. We ended up doing a bit of both, but we didn’t go all of the way down to the lake itself. If you want to, there are kayaks for rent if you want to go out on the sulfur laden water, but that didn’t sound too appealing to us.

View of the Crater
The Start of the Trail

The trail down to the lake is actually deep sand and not an easy hike going down and even harder going back up. There are mules available for $10 per person if you don’t want to make the difficult hike back up the side of volcano. The spectacular views more than made up for our exhaustion when we made it back to the top. Fortunately there are a couple of restaurants on the rim, so we were able to stop and have lunch before deciding to hike partially around the rim. Going around the entire rim would have taken us about three hours, so we only made it about a third of the way before turning around and heading back.

Hiking Around the Rim
The Bottom of the Trail

Visiting Quilotoa is only about an hour and a half drive from Quito and we would definitely recommend going there to anyone who travels to Ecuador. We arranged our private tour through the tour company, Happy Gringo, and our driver picked us up from the hotel.  Since the tour was private, we were able to customize it to our needs, which was quite convenient. This was the first of three volcanoes that we hiked on or around during our time in Ecuador, but it was also one of the most memorable. The colors of the water and the sheer size of the caldera are quite impressive to see. We were fortunate to have beautiful weather, although hiking the trail can be very dusty when it isn’t raining.

Canyon on the Way to the Volcano
Going Down was Easier than Climbing Back Up

We Enjoyed Our First Excursion in Ecuador

Today, we drove back into the Andes mountains, this time to visit one of the many volcanos that are Ecuador. It was great to see the beautiful scenery and get out of the city and into the countryside. We did a difficult hike inside of a caldera that is filled with water and then took a quick hike around the rim as well. All-in-all, it was a wonderful day, but quite exhausting. We still have many more adventures left and look forward to providing details on days like today. There are only a couple of days until we return to the Amazon jungle for four days, during which we might be completely out of touch, so forgive us if we don’t post for a few days. Enjoy a few photos from our day.

Driving through the Andes
View of the Caldera and Lagoon
Steep Cliffs of the Caldera
Stopped at a Canyon Stream along the Way
Going Down was Easier than Climbing Back Up