Went to Cajas National Park with Nige, Bjoern, Maggie and Giddy (two Kiwi´s)last Saturday and it was absolutely STUNNING!!! It is such a weird but beautiful place! There is over 250 different lakes and all of them sort of look the same which makes it really easy to get lost there. Before we went we heard from several people that visitors die there all he time. GREAT! That´s so encouraging! ;)
The park is huge (about 29.000 ha) and there is nothing else apart from a little information centre at the entrance... no huts, no park rangers, no rescue system... nothing! Since it´s so high (the elevation ranges from 3000 to 4500m) it gets really cold and foggy at night (sometimes the fog rolls in at midday already) and chances you survive once you get lost are pretty small. People basically freeze to death there. On top of that they don´t really have realiable maps of Cajas so most of the time we were more guessing than knowing through which area we were hiking. It was loads of fun though. We hiked for about 6 hours and had the most beautiful weather you can imagine.
We all got back with a slight headache (from hiking in high altitude) in the evening which unfortunately turned into a pretty bad one in my case. Two aspirin made me feel better the next day. Oh well, I guess we´re just not made for exercising in the Andean region.
Apart from that we´ve been visiting a guy in Cuenca who has his own guitar-workshop. He makes the most beautiful guitars I´ve ever seen - they´re all handmade and just amazingly beautiful! He puts so much work into every little detail and it takes him up to 3 months sometimes to finish one single guitar. If you´re ever in Ecuador and thinking about buying a guitar,let me know and I´ll provide you with his contact info, this is definitely the place to go!!!
We also visited some local markets in Gualaceo and Chordeleg on Sunday which was really intersting, especially the animal market. It made me sort of sad though to see how they treat the animals there. Not that pretty!
There´s some pics from the markets on my picture-webpage if you want to see more.
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