Bus meanderings

Laguna Quilotoa

I have just got back from a trip to Latacunga (a town about 2 hours south of Quito) and Laguna Quilotoa a nearby amazing lake in the crater of an extinct volcano at 3900m. On Friday I left work and went to Latacunga with Fernando, another Progressio development worker who lives there with his wife and two sons and they warmly welcomed me into their home. After a good nights sleep, lots of chat and a delicious breakfast of 'arepas' - special Columbian bread products (which I foolishly said were a little like British muffins!) Fernando took me to the bus station to head to Quilotoa.

Quilotoa is a weird tiny village whose existence is pretty much only justified by the lake that formed there 200 years ago and the tourism created by it. The lake is stunning though – a proper stereotypical volcanic crater that looked to me like it ought to have dinosaurs roaming around it. I had a great half an hour stomping down into the crater to reach the water and a puffing, panting and wheezing hour climbing back up to the rim. Below are a few of the many many pictures I took – the colour of the lake changes constantly throughout the day.

I think the purple plants in foreground are quinoa which grows wild here as well as being cultivated

It gets very cold there because of the altitude, but I spent a cosy night in a hostel with a group of cyclists crushed under a cosy mountain of blankets. I've concluded that one of the reasons for my settling in Scotland must be my love of the cold. I'm so much happier with 4 layers on in a cold wind than in the baking sun. People here seem to hate it. I had an amusing conversation with the elderly lady next to me on the sweltering bus to the Quilotoa when I opened the window, assuming everyone would want to reduce the heat and the smell of the two children being sick next to us. She told me that it was dangerous to open the window when the bus was ascending to altitude because the cold high altitude air would rush in suddenly and make us sick. I couldn't help noticing she was wearing what looked like 5 layers of wool whilst I was in a thin t-shirt. I suppose its just what you're used to.

Buses here are a lot more entertaining than buses in the UK. There are always people leaping and off to sell you strange plastic bags of food and other weird and wonderful products. Lots of them do a huge long sales pitch where they apologise loudly for the inconvenience but explain that they would other wise be unemployed and have a large family to support etc...then launch into a mammoth monologue about the merits of whatever product they are selling.

On the first bus of the weekend where a guy was selling cereal bars I stupidly made the resolution to buy one of whatever such vendors were selling in a sort of solidarity like buying the Big Issue. I stuck to my decision when the second guy got on selling pirate dvds (Volver) but quickly revoked my pact when the third guy began peddling a packet of herbs to cleanse men's urinary system and improve their sex drive. The 4th guy pushing children's literacy text book reinfirced my decision to be a bit selective in my solidarity.

Apart from the heat and the vomit though, the journey there was interesting to see all the tiny villages on route and the amazing patchwork of fields of cereals which reach to the very tops of mountains which would be bare in Scotland. I got a much better (and pleasantly cold) view on the way back in the back of a pickup truck.

Vertical agriculture

Other than that I have been working and settling into the mundane office realities which seem to be one of the few things that is the same in Quito and Edinburgh – setting up and fixing glitches in email accounts, writing budgets and workplans, cursing slow internet connections and fiddling around with tables in excel.