Ecuador’s Avenue of the Volcanoes, in the heart of the Ecuadorian Andes, extends from just north of Quito down through the centre of Ecuador and ends near Cuenca, some 300km to the south. We’re spending a few days exploring the Quilotoa Loop, a series of hikes about 140km south of Quito.

For more about our time in Ecuador, including highlights from three of the most popular cities – see our Quito, Baños and Cuenca post.

The Avenue of the Volcanoes

Running down the centre of Ecuador like a spine, a pair of mountain ranges – the Cordillera Occidental in the west, and the Cordillera Central in the east – bracket a long and narrow high central plain. These ranges are lined with a string of 39 volcanoes stretching from north to south. Four of these are still active, including one of the world’s biggest – Cotopaxi, a mere 70km from Quito.

Flows of lava from these volcanoes have formed ten lush basins within the central plateau, which today hold much of Ecuador’s farmland and over half of its population. The rough and rugged roads that wind their way through this plateau are prone to landslides and washouts, but offer the determined traveller some of the most picturesque views that Ecuador has to offer.

Driving South From Quito

LIfe in central Ecuador is a balancing act. On the one hand there is incredibly fertile soil, warm tropical air and plenty of water. It’s a paradise for growing all kinds of foods and flowers. Ecuador is the third largest exporter of flowers in the world, especially large long-stemmed roses from this area. On the other hand, the source of the fertile land is a parade of volcanoes (is that the collective noun for volcanoes?) that stretches almost the entire length of the country north to south, with four of them still active and capable of erupting at any time, devastating large numbers of people in a wide radius.

As we drive south through the so called Avenue of the Volcanoes, our driver explains that Cotopaxi is no exception. Sensors, cameras and sirens can be found throughout this area ready to send alerts of an imminent eruption. If When there is an eruption the 2 million people of Quito, only 70km away, have just 40 minutes before debris begins to fall on the city. Not to mention the many people who live even closer in the small towns and farms surrounding the volcano.

Thankfully today Cotopaxi sits benignly, looking like the quintessential volcano: a perfect snow-capped cone with a wide base that extends out to the surrounding landscape. There’s a ring of cloud about two thirds of the way up.

We’re heading further south along the Pan American highway to the Black Sheep Inn in Chugchilán, our base for a few days to do our version of the Quilotoa Loop.

The Quilotoa Loop and The Black Sheep Inn

The area we’re heading to has traditionally been a basic farming community nestled on the edge of Quilotoa Crater. There was no tourism to speak of until the American owners of the Black Sheep Inn set up a three-day hiking trail which is now known as the Quilotoa Loop. It’s a three day walk from hostel to hostel through the valleys formed by the surrounding volcanoes.

The local farmers thought they were crazy; why would tourists want to come to one of the poorest areas of Ecuador? Spectacular scenery is why. The steep volcanic mountainsides and plunging canyons that make farming so difficult is the same landscape that attracts tourists. Plus it’s an opportunity to see Ecuadorian life outside the cities and main tourist destinations. 30 years later there are multiple hostels and the local people are much better off thanks to tourist dollars. (Though the area is still struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels of tourists; it’s very quiet with only 8 people staying in our Inn each night. We don’t see many/any other travellers on our walks).

We’ve opted to base ourselves at the Black Sheep Inn and do day treks instead of the classic ‘through hike’ of the Loop.

The Highest Disc Golf Course In The World

It takes almost three hours to drive the 140km from Quito; most of that time on the winding roads after we leave the highway. We arrive at the Black Sheep Inn to a warm welcome in the cozy living room.

After some coca tea and delicious homemade oatmeal biscuits, we decide to try our hand at the ‘Highest Disc Golf Course in the World.’ We head out to the back of the property and find the sign to the first hole. We make our way up the steep hill through the long grass and find a gate to the adjoining field. A furry head pokes over the fence, then another, and another. Six very friendly llamas live here! After much patting and talking to the llamas we play the 6 frisbee holes we can find. The llamas are curious for awhile, and then go back to doing whatever llamas do when we’re not around.

More Travel Coincidences

The Inn supplies all of our meals and dinner is a communal affair. There are just eight of us staying tonight, including a family from Canada, Jenny and Colin and their two kids. As we sit down to dinner Jenny mentions that Al looks familiar, so we try to figure out where we might know each other from. They mention they’ve just spent three months in a small town called Rossland in British Columbia, Canada. We laugh and say we just spent five days in the jungle with a family from the same town – maybe they know them? Not only did they know them – that was the house that they’d rented in Rossland!

And to add to the coincidence – as we continue talking we eventually realize that her family owns a cottage on the same small lake in Ontario as Al’s family. There are maybe 20 families on our lake, and we meet one of them in a remote village in Ecuador. Ha!

Ups and Downs

We’re high up here – over 3,000m – and the clouds are all around us. It’s warm, but it feels like it could rain at any time and as the evening draws in there’s chill in the air. We’re happy to settle in to our small room with its wood stove and lots of warm blankets.

The next day the sun is poking through the clouds and it looks like we’ll have a good day for hiking. Together with a German couple from the Inn, Tanya and Emanuel, we get a ride down to the small town of Quilotoa about 40 minutes away. We plan on visiting the Quilotoa Crater, the western-most volcano of Ecuador, and then hiking back north through the valley about 12km to the Black Sheep. (Hikers doing the classic loop typically do this trek going in the other direction, with the crater the end point of their trip).

We arrive at the Quilotoa parking lot and our driver gives us a very precise set of directions to start the hike, involving waving his hand in the direction of a dirt path and saying “Just go that way.” So we “go that way,” and head towards a platform for a mirador. Suddenly the Quilotoa Crater is there before us in all it’s glory. The crater, formed by an eruption in the 13th century, is 3km wide and the lake inside is 250m deep.

The sun is shining and gives the water a stunning emerald green glow. It’s so inviting that we decide to make the hike down to the lake and back up before we head out on the trail through the valley.

We make our way down from the rim at 3,750m altitude. It’s only 250m down, but at this altitude even going down is a little tiring. Standing at the lakeshore and looking back up to the vertical ascent to the rim you get a sense of the magnitude of the eruption 800 years ago that sent debris throughout the northern Andes and lava flows that reached all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Back on the rim the trail winds around, up and down, with plenty of beautiful vistas of the crater and lake. At one point we come across a small group of people harvesting potatoes, in a field that is clutching to the outer side of the volcano’s rim. It’s so impossibly steep we can’t imagine walking down this slope, let alone pulling up potatoes and carting bags of them. Farming here is not for the faint of heart.

Into the Valley

It is possible to walk the trail around the entire rim of the volcano, but our trail cuts off about a third of the way around and heads down into the valley. As we come up over the rim of the volcano, we gaze out across the valley below. So fertile from the volcanic soil, there are small plots of farms everywhere with farms hosting potatoes, maize (the huge white corn mote is in all kinds of dishes here), and lupin beans.

From here the trail markers become less and less frequent and we’re very happy we followed Colin’s advice to have an AllTrails map on hand, and to check it often. In this area there are walking trails in every direction. The trail is not a set walking trail but just one of 100 possible ways to get from A to B. Or from A to ‘lost’ if you’re not a local.

As the trail leads down off the volcano and through flatter farmland we take three or four wrong turns, one involving a dog who is very insistent that we not go onto her owner’s property, and her smaller dog friend who with a wag of his tail and a look over his shoulder shows us the path back to the right trail.

We make our way down through fields of crops and sheep. At one point we reach a group of houses with a sign indicating our destination of Chugchilán township is to the left. But our AllTrails map shows to the right. We can see that both ways seem to lead to the same place so we follow AllTrails.

Suddenly we find ourselves literally on the edge of a cliff, the sandstone dropping straight down below us. From the flat green fields of farmland, the cliff drops off into a wall of undulating sandstone like gathered curtains dropping to the canyon floor.

According to AllTrails there’s a path down, but it’s hard to imagine how. It’s so steep here not even the crazy potato farmers have dared plant. We eventually find an actual trail sign seemingly in someone’s backyard. It points down the cliff. As we look out from here we realise that what goes down must come up, including us. We can see our destination off in the distance, on the other side of the canyon.

Click the video below

The walk down is spectacular. At one point Michelle makes the mistake of saying “This would be insane in the pouring rain.” It starts raining. Luckily it clears up faster than we can put on our rain gear so no torrents of mud or flash floods emerge.

The trail winds around one of the curtain folds of sandstone and there in front of us is a landslide of loose gravel. It drops from the top of the cliff several hundred meters down and covers about 100m of the trail. We can see someone else has walked over the landslide before us, possibly our German friends from the Inn? So we carefully make our way across, focussing on the hill and not for the first time very grateful for our hiking poles – four legs good.

In the 10km since we left the rim of the volcano, we’ve seen only a few people. Then, as we make our way down the steepest part of the entire trail, carefully picking our way down the hill using our walking poles, breathing heavily, a local women comes half jogging down the other side carrying a bag on her head and dressed in traditional garb complete with kitten heels. On her way home we guess. She disappears behind us and later we can see her picking her way nimbly across the same landslide we’d just crossed.

The trail eventually emerges onto a road, where a sign informs us we have just completed the ‘Aventura Extrema’ trail. We didn’t mean to, but it was spectacular.

By the time we get back to the Inn we’ve covered 18km in 6 hours. We’re regretting not opting for the hot soak and sauna they offer but since it takes 5 hours for the wood-fired stove to heat the water, we’ll have to settle for some good conversation and a beer instead.

Ridge Hike

There are several other possible day hikes in the area, and other Inn guests are heading to a local cheese factory and into the cloud forest. Michelle isn’t feeling well so we opt for the shorter Ridge Hike instead, up behind the Inn.

We zig zag our way up the hill around fields of maize, potato and beans, with cows and pigs and dogs for good measure. When we reach the top we see the valley laid out below us. We realise that the ridge we are looking at on the other side of the valley is in fact the rim of the volcano where we were yesterday. In fact, we can pick out most of our trail up to the point it descends into the deep canyon.

We walk along the ridge line for about 1km. We can see into the valley on the other side, a patchwork of fields and small farmhouses dotting the steep hillsides. The deep canyon makes a spectacular valley as it heads north. This is the route taken by people on the three day trail. We descend another impossibly steep field back to the Inn.

Before leaving the Black Sheep, we stop by our favourite Llama herd and feed them a few carrots before bidding them adieu.

Click the video below

Heading South to Baños

The beauty of travelling by bus in this part of the world is that you don’t need to make your way to a bus stop; they stop anywhere on the route to pick up and drop off passengers. So from the Black Sheep Inn driveway we hail a bus heading back to the Pan American Highway, where we’ll catch another bus on to our next destination, Baños.

As our bus drives south we are reminded of another reason life here is a balance. We come to a bridge that’s closed and we have to divert onto a dirt road up and around a mountain. Edmundo had explained that earlier this year they had 24 hour rains for months on end. The last time the locals remember this much rain was 50 years ago. Just a few weeks earlier, whole villages were wiped out by a huge landslide.

There is pavement under there somewhere

This diversion is one of the more extreme roads we’ve driven, with crevices of eroded mud a metre deep, and the side of the road dropping away into the canyon. And this is the ‘better’ road.

Thankfully we’re back on the main road before long and the scenery on the south side of Quilotoa is just as spectacular. Perhaps one day someone will extend the three day trail to include this area as well.

See our other blog post about our time in Baños, Cuenca and Quito!

The Quilotoa Loop: In a Nutshell

The Black Sheep Inn

• Getting there: We decided to splurge on a private car from Quito to the Black Sheep, which cost us $100. Alternatively you can take a bus from Quito to Latacunga, and then catch another bus to the town of Chugchilán. This will take most of the day, but will cost you less than $20 per person.
• They’ll provide a very nice box lunch for you every day. Breakfasts are great and dinners are filling. Everything is veggie there is a seemingly endless supply of free snacks (brownies, cookies and banana bread) to go along with the tea, coffee and water. Icy cold beer for a charge. .
• The hostel can organize a wood-fired hot tub/sauna for you at the end of the day. It takes five hours to heat up the water and costs around $20USD.
• Rooms have wood stoves; they prepare the kindling for you in the stove each day so it’s super easy to light and tend. Beds are comfy, showers extremely hot. Super clean composting toilets remind you of their commitment to the environment.
• But the absolute highlight is the herd of five llamas in the field behind the high cabins. They are so curious and so friendly, we visited them every day.

One-Way Hike Quilotoa Crater to Black Sheep Inn

• The Quilotoa Loop is a three day hike from village to village, starting in Sigchos and ending at the Quilotoa Crater. The walk to the crater from the Black Sheep is the last day of the trek.
• We chose to do this as a day hike travelling from south to north. Hikers normally travel north to south, but it’s definitely steeper going in that direction – our south-to-north hike is (slightly) easier.
• The Black Sheep can organize a truck to take you to the Quilotoa park entrance for about $5 per person. It’s about a 12km hike back to the Inn from here, plus another 6km if you hike down to the bottom of the crater and back.
• You have to pay $2 cash at the car park entrance to Quilotoa.
• There are no other charges for the walk, including the path down to the lake in the crater. There is a small booth that charges $2 to have your ‘Instagram moment’ with a heart shape, but if you go a little further to the right you can avoid this entrance and the charge.