Weekend in a CRATER

The blog posts are slow in coming, I know - we actually took this trip for Greg's birthday weekend September 23rd. We went to this beautiful, huge crater called Pululahua (try saying that three times fast - impossible).

See how dry this part of the valley is?

This is how it normally looks. (picture from here)

When we went, it hadn't rained in ages and much of it was really dry on the walk down. Because yes, we walked the cliff down to the crater bottom (and we walked back up on Sunday, too). The walk was steep and slippery with loose rocks, but we managed not to fall off or disgrace ourselves too much. The valley was so quiet and peaceful when we got all the way down.

Cute little donkey we met on the way down -
he didn't want much to do with us. :-/

After we ate lunch, we went for a longer walk around the base of the mountain in the crater. On the other side of the mountain, everything changed. It was lush and overgrown with plants - the farms were thriving and colorful. It was really beautiful. Midway through our hike, the fog rolled in and we were lucky to have a trail to follow otherwise we would've gotten quite lost.

I made friends with a donkey - he was in it for food, I think.
Too bad for him we had no donkey food on us.

Cows chillin' in the fog

The hike in the fog was very ethereal and dream-like. When we came out on the side our hostal was on, we saw farmers in the fields, chickens running around and cattle grazing, but only when the fog rolled away to reveal them. It was one of the coolest hikes I've been on in a while.

The fog is just about engulfing the land.

That night, we celebrated Greg's birthday with some yummy organic food and a dip in the hostal's jacuzzi. The next morning we ate breakfast, bought some of their naturally grown coffee and made our way up the side of the mountain back up to society.

The whole trip back to Quito probably took us 2.5 hours door to door. This actually is a short trip given that it can take us 1.5 hours to get to the southern bus terminal, which is IN Quito. We have a love/hate relationship with the traffic here.