After a cold night huddled under dozens of blankets we set off, excited to see the famous Laguna Quilotoa. As we left Chugchilan we were very thankful that we had decided to stop there for the night since the dirt roads started up again as soon as we were out of town. We pressed on slowly through the gravel and dirt and for some reason our GPS had us veer off what turned into a paved road and onto a sand filled path which then reconnected to the paved road again. After a few falls in the sand, which Josh generously helped Lauren and I pick up our heavy bikes we were off on our way to Laguna Quilotoa. Which was beautiful.
As much as we wanted to stay and explore the beautiful lake and around it, we had already taken longer than we wanted and we had to get going. Luckily the dirt roads were over and we had an easy, curvy ride to Ambato. On the way we stopped in Latacunga and checked out the market there. Lauren had some delicious cheesy fried bread.
After Ambato we began our ascent up to the Chimborazo Volcano which stands at an elevation of 20,000 ft (our route would take us up to 14,500 ft, higher than Pike’s Peak in Colorado). It began to get quite cold, and as we rode up we saw that our route would once again take us into impossible to see through fog, which meant that we would be unlikely to see much of the volcano either.
After some consideration we decided to take a lower elevation route to Baños. We ran into a whole slew of construction sights and were so slowed down that we didn’t reach Baños until dark had almost set in. Again. This was turning out to be a trend.
Unfortunately, since we arrived late and had to leave early the next morning we didn’t get a chance to experience the hot springs which the town is famous for. We did enjoy a delicious dinner at a nice restaurant across the street from our hostel which was easily the nicest hostel we stayed at the entire trip. We went to bed early, and slept really well that night.
part 3 tomorrow
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