Day Five: Laguna Cuicocha Hike - Continental Divide
Day Five: Laguna Cuicocha Hike - Continental Divide
We spent the day hiking around this beautiful crater lake, then enjoyed a homemade picnic of pesto pasta, roast beef, empanadas, cerveza, and fresh fruit! Afterwards we drove along a winding back road up across the Ecuadorean continental divide along the eastern range of the Northern Andes (Cordillera Orient).
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Pilsener is one of two local Ecuadorean cervezas, the other being Club. But since a grande Pilsener (750 mL) only cost about 85 cents, why order anything else?!
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On a journey to visit friends...
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Hola, mi amigos!
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Laguna Cuicocha, a crater lake at 10,638 feet near Cotacachi Volcano.
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Yes, there will be a lot of crater lake photos :>
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This is a live fence. The posts actually take root after being set, and grow into trees.
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This bird is carrying something in its beak. Hopefully not a mouse.
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A tree covered in bromeliads and epiphytes.
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You can see the path along the crater lake ridge.
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The clouds in Ecuador are amazing! Especially in the highlands where one side of a mountain will be dry and the other wet like a sponge catching all the rainfall to funnel it into the Amazon basin.
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This little piggy... (and friends)
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Taking the higher back road over the mountains. Below is the main highway primarily used by the oil companies. One of Ecuador's largest exports is refined oil piped from the highlands down to the coast.
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Flat Stanley at the Continental Divide at about 13,000 feet! Sandy and Toby helping Stanley to create one trickle of water that will run west to the Pacific and the other east to the Amazon and, ultimately, the Atlantic.