Volcanoes

I am back in Quito, but head off to the southern colonial gem of Cuenca this afternoon. This last weekend, I stayed in one of the many restored 17th-century haciendas, complete with stables, enormous fireplaces and huge-beamed ceilings. The hacienda style of architecture, with a tiled courtyard and fountain in the middle of the sprawling white-washed house has always been my favorite, and I fell in love with the hotel. Well, really all of Ecuador is just lovely.

Like in Bolivia, the valleys of the Ecuadorian highlands are surrounded by volcanoes, ranging from 12,500 to 15,000 feet. Here, as in Bolivia, the glaciers on these are shrinking at an alarming rate. We spent the morning hiking up around a crater lake on the shoulder of one of these extinct volcanoes (Cotacachi), which afforded fantastic views across all of Otovalo valley. On the drive back we were confronted with the very clear view of Cotopaxi – another volcano close to Quito that remains hidden behind cloud cover much of the time.