Tambopaxi Cotopaxi

... joined the others for dinner. Jody and Niamh had found friends in the two children of our hosts and were invited to have dinner with them. We were spoiled for food and Christie and I indulged in our first glass of wine since Argentina. We swapped stories and brainteasers over more than enough wine and stumbled our way back to our little house where there was a fire. I stowed it up with more wood and we were roasting. We settled in for a really deep sleep.

... we hiked up a river to a waterfall, stripped down to our underwear and followed Marshals brave example by jumping off the waterfall into the pool below. The dalmations that lived on the farm showed us the way home. We had dinner with Tarquin, the hostal owner and played cards with his two little boys.

The next day we borrowed some mountain bikes and took a greuling ride up to the entrance of Cotopaxi national park to ...

... in the middle of it. The parade was pretty mental, bands, men carrying cooked pigs on there backs for a feast, people with bottles of rum pouring them down the mouths of anyone in the crowd! I go so drunk without paying a damn cent!
I am headed to Quilotoa tomorrow up in the highlands, but the festival is still on when i plan to come back on Sunday, so Ill get some photos and a better description of what actually happens in the parade and festival!

... of flags tied above at rooftop level to show that it was indeed a route. We discovered that the festival consisted of a carnival that paraded not once, but three times. Each time taking a slightly different route but all within the vicinity of the area we were in. One parade had already been at 10am, the next one about 2pm and one later around 6pm. Each parade lasted about one and a half hours. We found our way to a nearby street found a small café to eat ...

... attached. I think there may have been a repair garage somewhere back there but it wasn`t visible to me.

Eventually though we were off and into the mountains. We stopped a few times to take pictures, one place in particular looked quite like a small Machu Picchu, called Wainu Picchu - so called because from a certain angle the rock formation looks like a woman's face. By this stage there was a gusting wind, so strong i almost fell ...

... bag of some liquid, lets just say it could have been gone off milk or something with a similar consistency and colour, but the guy in the car in front bought it, really wish we knew what it was! There is somewhere where some hallucinogenic cactus juice is popular (although illegal and can give you flashbacks years afterward), so maybe it was that but we will never know and I´m sorry, but no photo of that for you!

So ...

... etc. It wasn´t much more than a few walls but I couldn´t believe they were still here when everything around it was covered by volcanic rock from relatively long ago eruptions. He also showed us a series of little hills that looked like bumps on the landcape. These are apparently burial chambers for the higher caste, and were covered over to avoid Incan discovery. We also saw an Andean Condor which apparantly is quite rare, so lucky us.

Next up ...

... bikes, especially during the busy lunchtime period. lacatunga itself is not really a tourist destination, however, it is the starting point for many of the adventure tours we see advertised. Also, there is a famous Indian market nearby so tourists stay here for that. Unfortunately that means accommodation is generally priced on the high side. The cheapest we could find was 16 usd (or 12 for shared facilities, but no window either) but for the extra 4 dollars we have got ...

So we started early. Was picked up by the tourguide and we drove to Cotopaxi. Tour guide said we must have paid the weather man, as the day prior was bad weather and there is one Volcano you can only see from the "Street of Volcanos" three days a year and we could see it.
Cotopaxi was dry, so instead of the sludge I was expecting, we had dust. I became the pack-horse as the layers were coming off. We ...