A guest post from Adriana one of our 8 week summer interns:

This weekend the summer interns + Carryn and Torie traveled to Quilotoa. This was our first travel weekend and it was quite an adventure. Im not sure about the other interns but I had never traveled on busses with backpacks like that, but thanks to our great leaders, we made it to Quilotoa without a hitch.

The whole group including trip leaders Carryn and Torie

After a 4 hour trip on 3 different busses we checked in to our "hostal." The rooms were great and thankfully had a small oven to keep our rooms warm. I definitely underestimated how cold it would actually be, but at an altitude of 12,841 feet I guess the cold makes sense. After having some lunch we prepared for our hike down the crater. I had seen the crater in pictures but once we finally made our way to the edge of the crater, I was blown away--it was stunning! The hike down the crater took us about 45 min, but the real beast was going back up. There were donkeys available to take us back up; however, we were determined (some more than others) to hike back up. After about an 1 hour and a half and many water breaks we made it to the top, exhausted and out of breathe.

Laguna Quilotoa in all its glory

PD Torie and intern Sophie enjoying the view

The next day we woke up at 5:30 am to watch the sunrise. We were a little disappointed that it was too cloudy to see the sunrise, but it was still beautiful! The rest of the morning we took a guided hike to see an Incan cave. The hike lasted about 3 hours and was much tougher than we were told, nevertheless we all felt very accomplished after we finished.

The group on their Sunday hike to nearby caves

Four of the six interns were also sick at one point during the trip but all in all it was a great weekend at Quilotoa!