We arrived late on a saturday night into Quito, so decided to take advantage of our free welcome cocktail from the Nu House Boutique Hotel. We called it a night at around midnight, but from the sound of it, the rest of the city was up well into the morning!

At around 7:00am, ok closer to 8:00, but who's keeping score (I call this ''south american'' time), our guide Marco picked us to up drive us about 30 miles south to Ecuador's second highest peak - Cotopaxi volcano. It's about 5,900 meters high, and you can climb to the top with proper glacier climbing gear (ice axe, crampons, etc.). We weren't …

After a delicious breakfast, we were on the road again toward Laguna Quilotoa - an enormous volcanic crater lake. The ride was amazing in that we got to see the beautiful countryside, but it was also incredibly dusty as the road was under construction almost the entire way there. The view from the top of the crater is amazing. We were able to hike …

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