We left Cotacachi with a local bus to get to Quiroga, the ride only took 5min. On the main place of Quiroga, pick ups wait for tourists and can take you for $3.50 to the lake Cuicocha 14km away. Normally you should pay $1 to enter the national park but as we arrived before 8am nobody was there to collect the money. We though we will just wander for an hour or two around the lake but our driver told us that you can walk around the lake in 4h, so we decided to do so and arranged for him to pick us up 4h45 later. However when we started the walk we saw a board saying that the walk takes 5h! But we still went for it and had a lovely time walking around this beautiful lake with pretty surroundings. The walk was quite hard at some stage as the track was very steep but we managed to do it in 4h30 ...stopping a lot to take pictures! We then came back to Cotacachi (pickup $3,50 + bus $0,13) to pick up our bags and have a quick meal. Afterwards we caught a bus back to Otavalo where we did some more shopping at the market and took a few more pictures of this lovely town and its very well dressed inhabitants. On the way back to the station we also took a picture of those small meat shops where the meat is left outside all the day....which makes you wonder if it is safe to eat in the restaurants around. We then caught a bus back to Quito where we arrived around 6pm and got stuck in the rush hour traffic jams. We returned under the rain to our hotel and had a light dinner at the lovely sandwich place next door.
