CITTI Project Ecuador Tour 2006

Yesterday I met a Grayline bus at AM for the tour that took us South through suburbs of Quito where many who work in Quito have houses on the mountainside. It's aparently too expensive to build in Quito. We stopped at an agricultural market, a small town where pigs were on tables on main street after having recently being cooked. We stopped at another maket where there was agriculture and crafts for sale. The woven and knitted things were outstanding. We're anticipating that we'll see even more of such items when we travel to the Otavalo market Saturday.
From there we traveled through the avenue of volcanos. We learned that volcanos are either male or female and that most are married. Some are tough marriages because the volcanos might reside 20 or so miles apart. We left the highway and traveled on dirt roads way way back to the Cotopaxi Volcano National Park. Many volcanos along the way had a cloud cover over them. This was the case when we entered the park, but we went on toward the volcano anyway. We got one or two breaks in the clouds and were able to take pictures of Cotopaxi. The peak is covered with snow. It is claimed that Cotopaxi Volcano is the highest active volcano in the world.
Regarding height, Cotopaxi is right on the Equator and if you measure from the center of the earth and then add on the height of Cotopaxi, it is the highest. The peak is about 18,000 ft and our pictures were taken from about 12,000 feet.
Regarding Active, Cotopaxi continues to give off a little steam and continues to cause earthquakes, but it hasn't erupted in the last 150 years.
Next we traveled further on the dirt roads and ended up at Hacienda San Agustin De Callo. A very old hacienda that is now a hotel. We were offered a special drink from a cactus with a shot of alcahol in it. Then the guide said, we have a surprize for you and into the center of the hacienda came 150 or so Lamas. They were very tame and loved the carrots we fed them. This went on until the guide said, Let's give the lamas a hand to show how much we enjoyed them. Our clapping turned out to be a cue and off through a side door ran the Lamas.
Quite a day!!!