Quilotoa is an extinct volcano with a large lagoon in the crater. The picture says it all, it is quite simply stunning. Our guidebook being slightly out of date, we caught a bus to a nearby town and then walked 12km (at 3,500+m) to the hamlet by the rim of the crater. In actual fact the bus we were on would have taken us the whole way, but hey the walk was good training. Plus we provided freak show entertainment for some local kids. A point of interest in this ...

We headed up to Latacunga as a base to make the trip to Quilotoa. An otherwise pretty unremarkable town, we happened to arrive during the Mama Negra festival. I haven't yet googled this for a full explanation, but let me try to describe what we saw. 1. Mama Negra is portrayed by blacked up men. 2. The many Mama Negra's parade through town each carrying a construction of a whole cooked pig surrounded by cooked rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs on their backs. S...

I'll keep this brief. The Devil's Nose train trip, post-refurbishment, was a massive disappointment. Previously a death defying rickety train ride on poorly maintained tracks, it is now simply regular train running through the mountains. Whoop. Apparently it wasn't uncommon for the train to come off the tracks and for the passengers to have to help put it back on. These days most of the passengers would struggle to put on their own shoes without help. However t...

I include an entry for Riobamba mainly for the journey there. The direct road between Baños and Riobamba is frequently closed due to the constant volcanic activity of Tungurahua. I can see why. I'm not actually convinced it was officially open when we took it, particularly for poorly maintained coaches. Some of the road was intact, but a lot of it had been 'washed' away by lava flows and made (barely) passable by bulldozers flattening the lava into a fine dusty...

We left Napo at some ungodly time on Friday morning, hit the canoes, the power boat and two buses to reach the town of Baños early evening. The bus journeys revealed more of Ecuador's stunning landscapes, moving from the edge of the rainforest into the Andes. In particular the region around Baños with its soaring peaks, waterfalls and of course volcanos. Also, I noticed that Ecuadorean men seem to be intent on keeping their women folk permanently bearing chil...