Cold, lucid night inside the crater on the sand by the lake in our tent, shores shared by a mother, two children, horses and a cow, team 50% ill, howls and barks from the brim echoing in the crater, smiley moon shooting up to light the hills purple, watch morning rays crawl down and steam the lake, up and away on dos caballos maron tentative on loose rocks, the mares kissing hello to the third horse on the way, dodging a kid and his twenty sheep on their way down, all intact, truck it to Zumbahua and back to Latacunga for some films and fever-abatement.
Next day to Baños de Agua Santa for some holy water bathing beside an active volcano, Tungurahua (where all the locals and almost as many tourists go to cure ails), some class III-IV rafting and plenty of drinks, then Cuenca, a well-sized city in the South for all-round nice times, some salsa in a small smelly sexy den with an Argentinian called Israel and Ecuadorian-Freiburgian ladies fluent in German, Finnish hips not quite liquid but decent attempts made, the last leg in Ecuador soon over as sandy North Peru beckons.












