Hiking around Quilotoa crater

Yesterday we went and hiked down to the bottom of Quilotoa crater, it is a sunken volcanic crater that has filled with water. It appeared smaller than Guinea Pig lake we hiked around last week. It was about 1,000 feet from the crater rim down to the lake. The lake was at 11,800 feet and the crater rim around 12,800 feet. We took some good photos and I think Dennis will be posting them on his Blog today as well.

It was a pretty long day, we went to an animal market in the morning, they had pigs, goats, sheep, llamas, and cows for sale. We saw a lot of mad pigs as they heard them by grabbing their tails and lifting them up. Also, the smaller pigs were put into white bags (pig-in-a-poke style). I don´t think the pigs liked that either. There were several pickup trucks with 6 or 8 sheep, and a couple pigs stuffed in the back. (We also spotted a couple pigs doing the wild thing.)

Then we went to a craft market and I bought a couple more water colors and a couple hand carved masks (hint hint Gary).

After the market we drove to the crater I talked about. They have a small factory that makes these hand carved masks so I think most people bought them there as well. By the time we got done hiking down to the lake and back up to 12,800 we were tired and hungry and ended up getting back to the hacienda around 7:00 (after dark).

Speaking of the Hacienda, Denis and I have the entire 3rd floor with a sitting room, and a separate bedroom with TV. Pretty nice... we flipped a coin for who got which bed (I lost). But, I took the heater and put it in the sitting room so I was at least warm in my hugre room with 20+ foot ceilings!

This morning Eddie and I went for a 6 mile run (at 10,000 feet!). It was fun but man was I breathing hard and my pulse was way up there! Eddie of course wasn´t breathing hardly at all.