Baños, Ecuador

Came down to the small town of Baños, located at 1800m in the Andes. The surroundings are amazing, high mountains, very green, but unfortunately since 3 days not really visible, as it is always cloudy and since yesterday it has been raining on and off. Rather on than off... We chose this de-acclimatization because Kaarel felt sick and probably it is not the best option to cure a cold or a flu at 4000m high in the hidden village of Quilotoa with an average temperature of 10C. 
Actually I think Kaarel is just faking this sickness because he was too lazy to hike. :o) It is really a pitty, as the landscape was truly amazing. Quilotoa is located on the rim of a crater with a beautiful green-blue crater lake in its perfectly round full caldera. The lake is some 400m lower from the rim and is about 250 m deep.

The water is salty and sulfuric (the vulcano is still active), so it is not potable and has no fish. The weather was not really good and unfortunately we could not see most of the surrounding mountains, including the two most famous vulcanos, the Cotopaxi and the Iliniza. There are several hiking options in the area, but we only hiked down to the lake and back up to the village. Still that hike was pretty awesome, especially when the sun came out from behind the clouds and made the lake change its colors.
The locals in the village were very friendly, they clearly live on tourism, as every second house is a hostel  and the rest are "art galleries" or small grocery stores. Still the local women kept their traditional wear of black shoes, white stockings, knee-high dark skirts, blankets around their shoulders and small hats sometimes decorated with peacock feather. Even young girls wear this outfit, but the boys and men do not seem to care that much about tradition and run around in normal clothes. Occasionally some of them do wear a poncho though.

So unfortunately we had to leave this Andean paradise and now we are waiting for better weather in Baños, so we can do some downhill mountain biking to Puyo which is 60 km away. The route should be spectacular, passing by many waterfalls in a beautiful valley as it arrives to the steamy jungle. As its name suggests, Baños is also famous for its thermal water. But as it is pretty wet outside, it does not make much sense to visit the spas until the weather gets better.