Otavalo

2.5 hours from Quito is Otavalo, a largley indigenous town famous for it´s Saturday markets -where you can find anything from chickens to textiles. Otavalo is in a valley, surrounded by the peaks of various volcanoes. It´s a beautiful setting and has great hiking. We definitely needed some exercise after all we´ve been eating and drinking (we can get a litre of good red wine for $3.50 here)!

Just 15km from the town are three lovely lakes. The Lonely Planet said you could hike round them without a guide so we thought we´d give it a whirl. We flagged a taxi and negotiated, in Spanish, the price: $10 there, $10 back and $10 to wait for up to 4.5 hours for us to walk round the three lakes. All good. We were off.

Then we heard "FUCK" the driver has driven the wrong way down a street. It was so funny hearing him swear in English, we were all laughing away. Then the driver started speaking to us in Spanish again, I hadn't a clue what he was going on about and then in English he said "bring my wife?". Of course we said, and then we headed to his house to pick up...a sweater. No wife. Then we drove to a shop and we realised he was calling his wife. We then drove over the road and waited for a few mins, the wife then turned up in another taxi and off we went. We felt like we were going on a little family trip!

The lakes were amazing, we must have got up to about 4,000 ft at one point so we had some great views. The walking was a little bit more up hill then we´d imagined but our supply of chocolate got us round. Have a look at the pictures....


Us at the first lake (the fog slowly coming down from above)

The 1st and 2nd lake together

Tiny Jude on way to the 3rd lake

3rd lake