La Luna, Santa Lucia, Black Sheep Inn

November 05, 2017

Before time slips away from these vivid memories, I wanted to write about going to La Luna in Otavalo, Santa Lucia, and to the Black Sheep Inn.

All of these places have shown me some of the absolute breathtaking areas in Ecuador, just a few hours outside of Quito. These casual trips have allowed for lots of relaxing, reading (shocking for me lol), and taking so many pictures of mountains, although I can't seem to capture the way I see them in person!

Sept. 22 - Sept. 24

In Otavalo, we stayed at a Hostel called La Luna. There, I went to a leather market, and a huge Ecuadorian market. Although I didn't go hiking on that trip, my oh my did we walk a lot! There was a big group of us that travelled together, but we all split off to do our own thing! At night, we played lots of games, like Sardines (where one person hides and everyone has to quietly find them and hide with them until only one person is standing). The hostel made mulled wine, which I can't think of drinking anything more perfect on a cold evening outside in the mountains! The last memorable part of the trip was that we saw a tarantula. It was absolutely terrifying--thank God he wasn't anywhere near my room. I haven't ever seen a tarantula in real life, only on TV!

Oct. 7- Oct. 9

Santa Lucia is an ecolodge in a cloud forest, close to Mindo (another mountainous place). We hiked a hot and sweaty hour with all of our stuff on our backs to get there. And to think the staff has to do that every day! Ugh! It was incredible to find out that men had to carry all of the materials up the mountain to build this place. I can't even imagine. Santa Lucia is popular for bird watching, and for the exotic animals they see there in general. We saw so many beautiful hummingbirds, and birds that I could never tell you the names of!

From Santa Lucia, we took a 20 minute walk to a rope swing, that flew so high in the air, viewing over all of the wildlife of the forest we were in. Santa Lucia conserves electricity, so they only had it on for one hour each night. We took advantage of the darkness by telling scary stories! The ecolodge also has huge vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and the most perfect sunsets-- when you aren't being swallowed up by the clouds!

November 1 - November 4

The Black Sheep Inn is 30 minutes beyond Quilatoa, a crater filled lagoon, surrounded by mountains. The first day we were there, we hiked 11 miles: we were dropped off at Quilatoa, and we hiked our way back to the Inn. We had picture directions, which were not at all helpful (one of the pictures showed a donkey and a small rock next to it--as if that would still be there), so we got a bit lost, and often felt we weren't going the right direction at all. The first part of the hike was around the rim of the lagoon, then we had to make our way to a town about 2.5 hours from there.

When we found the town, we saw many people celebrating el dia de los muertos-- the day of the dead. They were dressed formally, decorated the tombstones of the people they lost, and were eating and drinking next to the graves. I so badly wanted to take a photo, but I felt it would be disrespectful. It was such a cool experience, remembering learning about this day from taking Spanish class in middle school and high school.

After we past the town, we knew we had about 2-3 hours more of hiking to get back to the Inn. The thunder started rumbling, and we knew we better move fast. Most of the way, we were not confident we were on the right track, especially heading into a deep canyon that didn't look like we were going to be able to get back out. Positive thinking definitely got me through! We made it back to the Black Sheep Inn at 5 hours of hiking.

At the bottom of the canyon, knowing we had to start hiking up the other side.

After climbing a sand wall, we were a bit dirty!

The next day, our bodies were hurting from head to toe! But there was still one more hike we wanted to do-- the skywalk. The hike was moderately more challenging than the first one, although it was just 2 hours. The views made it completely worth every ache in our bodies. We spent the rest of the weekend relaxing, reading (again, this is shocking), and not wanting it to end!! I will definitely go back there again.