We finally caught this bus to Zumbahua after a sleepless night. The bus was packed with indigenes and some of them were very smelly, we really felt we were far from the tourist track. The landscapes were beautiful and the two hours trip went quite quickly. The bus dropped us on the main road which is 5min away from the village. Over there people offered us to drive us to the Laguna Quilotoa. After long negociations we only paid $8 return (you can catch a bus, which will work much cheaper) with the guy waiting an hour at the laguna. An hour is a bit short to enjoy the beautiful sceneries of the laguna (we wished we will have enough time to walk down to the lake) but we had to return early to Latacunga to go back to the police station. The guy dropped us back to the village where there is not many options to eat. There are only 3 restaurants and only 1 was opened, but we decided to not eat there as it looked very dirty. We managed to buy some crisps and a very dusty bottle of coke in a shop offering a very limited range of products. We then had to walk back up to the main road to catch a bus back to Latacunga (this was quite a challenge as the slope was very steep). We were quite happy to leave this village as we felt out of place. All the people over there speak Quechua, there is no facilities for tourists, the conditions are very basic and the options to eat/sleep are very limited. Once back in Latacunga we went to the police station to pick up some paperwork and then quickly caught a bus to Banos to leave this unsafe town. We arrived in Banos around 5pm, this town is in a very green valley and felt very safe and welcoming after Latacunga. We got a faboulous room in a nice hotel (Hostal Los Nevados) with view on the nearby waterfall. This was great to relax after all the stress of the stolen backpack. In this evening Andres, Claire husband met us up and brought for Laurence a backpack and some clothes.
