Our first stop on our Ecuador journey was at a Hacienda near Otavalo, north of Quito. Otavalo is famous for their craft market. It is the largest indigenous market in Ecuador. It takes place in Plaza de Panchos. There are food and animal markets in other parts of the city.
Well we are on the road again, this time for a 10 day trip to Ecuador. We flew to Miami on Sunday and then took a four hour flight to Quito, Ecuador. It is the second highest country capital in the world at about 9,500 feet.
Since we last wrote, we left the hacienda north of Quito on Wednesday and made our way to Cotopaxi National Park about 50 miles south of Quito. We hired a driver to take us between the two destinations, which included a stop at the equator itself, about 15 miles north of Quito.
As I write this, Sandy and I are making our return trip upstream on the Rio Napo (Napo River) from the Sacha Lodge back to Coca, Ecuador – a distance of approximately 50 miles. We stayed at Sacha for the last four days.
We flew to Cuzco from Lima and spent a day there touring the Sacred Valley before going to the Amazon Basin. After that trip, we returned to Cuzco to use it as a base for our trip to Machu Picchu. On both occaisions we enjoyed the beautiful and historic city.
One of the highlights of the entire trip was the visit to the Amazon Basin, which was a short flight from Cuzco to the gateway city of Puerto Maldonado. Once there, we boarded a boat for a journey up an Amazon tributary for a total of eight hours to a research center.
Two days were spent in the Lake Titicaca region, including a home stay with indigenous Aymaran families on one of the islands. Getting to the lake was half the fun, via a 10 hour train trip over a 14,200 foot pass and through the beautiful stark altiplano landscape.
We took a multi-day trek into Colca Canyon, one of the deepest in the world. We visited several villages and viewed condors from a canyon lookout.
