Last night we booked a tour for today. A van and our guide Alex picked us up at our hotel at 8:30 and we headed up into the Andes. Our first stop was Tigua. A style of painting called Tigua originated near here. It shows colorful indigenous scenes painted on skins. We stopped at a shop and browsed. We almost bought a fairly large painting but ended up with a small one.
Saturday is market day in Zumbahua the next town we stopped in. We spent about 20 minutes exploring the market. Everyone who lives in this area is indigenous and we drove by many indigenous farms as we climbed into the mountains.
The market had everything from guys with treadle sewing machines sewing clothes, to live chickens and sides of lamb.
They also had wool.
Pineapples
And bananas.
From Zumbahua we climbed up to the volcanic crater lake, Laguna Quilotoa. The rim of the crater is at an elevation of 3914 meters (12,841 ft). We climbed down the steep sandy trail 400 meters (1312 ft) to the lake shore.
Coming back up was really hard work and made me think we were out of our minds. We could have hired a couple of these for $20 to ride back up but didn’t.
We had lunch of soup, broiled chicken, fried potatoes, cabbage and rice at a restaurant on the rim. Boy did it hit the spot!
For dinner tonight after getting cleaned up and resting a bit we had pizza and beer.
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