Pinan Lakes Trek, part 3

The last night camping in the Pinan lakes was rather wet. OK, very wet. It rained pretty much all night and right up until the dawn, all of us hunkered down in our wonderfully effective tents (no sarcasm...we were dry) and wondering just how were were going to break camp and cook our wonderfully delicious oatmeal in such a deluge. But the skies smiled on us again, and the rain quit around 6:00 AM, and we piled out onto the soggy ground to break camp then set out.

A long day, spent primarily in descent. After some up & down traversing of small ridges we found ourselves pointed down, down, and down several different clefts and cuts and little mini-ravines full of mud and, increasingly, full of broken rock and somewhat firmer ground.

Down, down, down, and down some more, with stunning views of big towns and the widiening Otavalo valley below, we picked our way for hours down the hillside. Around 11 Joel said we had about one and a half hours left, then he said the same thing around 1:00, then the same thing around 2:30.

descending from the Pinan lakes, towns way off in the distance

Finally we could see our destination below us, a little touristy strip of a town called Chimborozo that is known for its hot springs. So we worked our way through fields and bushwhacked down steep hillsides for about another 1.5 hours until we finally spilled onto an actual road, met up with our horse crew and our stuff, and made camp on the grounds of a small hotel there.

descending towards the end of the trek

A great trek. Dinner in a roadside restaurant that night, followed by an evening and morning of washing and drying our clothes and kit, then soaking in hot pools and luxuriating at the receiving end of giant pipes gushing fantastically hot torrents of water, blasting away the mud and muck of the trail.

Next up, community service in San Clemente.