Latacunga

I arrived to Latacunga after the nice drive around the Chimbarozo Volcano, but in town it was miserable and rainy, so I checked into the Chimbarozo hotel overlooking the main plaza in town.
Wednesday morning it was still looking a bit miserable so I opted to join a tour up to the Quilatoa crater rather than do a 3 day trip around myself on the local busses. I piled in the jeep with 3 other yanks and first stopped by the morning market at Pijili for breakfast. We continued on through some villages and farms, stopping off at some guys house that was made entirely from grass. Supposedly it lasts for 20 years. We also stopped off by a canyon before reaching the town of Quilatoa. From here we trekked the 1200m descent from the crater rim to the lake at the bottom. The lake was bubbling away and it was a hard slog of a climb back out again. On the way back we could see all the volcanoes in the region... Chimborozo, Illimiza (?), Cotopaxi, and ?? just behind Baños which was smoking away.
The next day I caught up with the Americans again for breakfast and we got a taxi out to Saquisili for the biggest indigenous markets in the country. They were actually pretty big with 5 plazas around town all packed with vendors. We checked out the animal market where there were plenty of guinea pigs, chickens, goats and turkeys. Also the fruit markets, tourist craft market, and the everything-else markets.
I got back to Latacunga to have my left over pizza for lunch and then enjoyed the sun in the plaza and a lake in a nearby suburb.
I was hoping to find some nightlife in town for the Thursday night, but instead all the restaurants were closed by 9pm so I headed to bed to watch some movies hungry!