Rest day: Lake Quilotoa and Baños

After yesterday’s summit of Cotopaxi, the Ecuador Volcanoes team spent the day sight-seeing and relaxing at Lake Quilotoa and Baños. Here’s expedition leader Terray Sylvester with today’s expedition dispatch:

Hello, this is Terray calling in for the Madison Mountaineering Ecuador Volcanoes expedition. It’s January 31st. Today is one of our two rest days before we climb Chimborazo, the highest volcano in Ecuador. That summit day is planned for Wednesday.

So, today we woke up in Chugchilan in our hacienda. We had a nice breakfast there and then we drove to Quilotoa which is a spectacular crater lake southeast of Quito. We had lunch there and admired the view. We also spent some time browsing through a local handicrafts market.

Now we are in Baños, which is a hot springs resort town right at the base of a 16,000 ft. active volcano called Tungurahua. We’ll have dinner here and we’ll spend two nights here in town. There are a lot of spas around, zip-lining, waterfalls tours, and other activities to do. So, we are looking forward to relaxing and then on Tuesday, we’ll drive towards Chimborazo to head up to high camp.

So all is well and I’ll be in touch tomorrow with another update.