J & J's South American Adventure

Our travels along the Quilotoa Loop began with a trip north of Latacunga to the town of Saquisilí to see the Thursday market. There we saw all sorts of things - local fruits and veggies, herbs, live animals for sale, like chickens, pigs, guinea pigs (for the local delicacy called "cuy"), and many more things that you don´t usually see in Safeway.

We headed back to Latacunga mid-morning and met up with Tim Theis at the bus station. We immediately hopped on a bus to Chugchilán, where we planned to stay for a couple of days and use as our base for hikes and the like along the Quilotoa Loop. Tim was a brave lad -- he´d only arrived in Ecuador two days earlier, and had already taken a 2 hr bus ride to meet us. This next ride was supposed to be about 3.5 hrs long. Of course, before long Tim will probably be taking 10+ hour bus rides, but to us he was a hardy soul.

As always, the buses are a bit crazy. This one was a relatively comfy bus, but since there are only two buses per day going to Chugchilán, the locals streamed on board and very quickly it was overcrowded. At least we had our seats and were ready for the long ride.