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- Quilotoa Crater Lake and Rim — The obvious showstopper: a dead-volcano bowl filled with unnaturally turquoise water and a rim that drops sheer into the crater. Walk the rim for constantly changing perspectives, or drop down the steep trail for a totally different sense of scale. (Personal favorite — sunrise from the rim: the light turns the lake electric and the silence is absurd.)
- Ridgewalks toward Chugchilán — Long, exposed ridgelines with back-to-back panoramas of jagged peaks and distant snow-capped volcanoes (on clear days you’ll pick out Cotopaxi and Chimborazo). The trail feels endless in a good way: open sky, wind, and that kind of raw highland exposure you don’t get in forested trails.
- Andean villages and homestays (Isinliví, Chugchilán, etc.) — Small Quechua-speaking communities
- Quilotoa Crater Lake and Rim — The obvious showstopper: a dead-volcano bowl filled with unnaturally turquoise water and a rim that drops sheer into the crater. Walk the rim for constantly changing perspectives, or drop down the steep trail for a totally different sense of scale. (Personal favorite — sunrise from the rim: the light turns the lake electric and the silence is absurd.)
- Ridgewalks toward Chugchilán — Long, exposed ridgelines with back-to-back panoramas of jagged peaks and distant snow-capped volcanoes (on clear days you’ll pick out Cotopaxi and Chimborazo). The trail feels endless in a good way: open sky, wind, and that kind of raw highland exposure you don’t get in forested trails.
- Andean villages and homestays (Isinliví, Chugchilán, etc.) — Small Quechua-speaking communities give the loop its human texture: clay houses, market stalls, handwoven textiles and home-cooked meals. Staying in a family-run hostal or shared kitchen is where you meet real local life — not tourist façades — and it’s what makes the loop culturally memorable.
- Páramo landscapes and unique flora & birds — The high-altitude grassland (páramo) is a strange, windswept ecosystem: cushion plants, frailejones, carpets of wildflowers and skittering highland birds and hummingbirds. It’s quiet, otherworldly, and biologically different from cloud forest hikes — you’ll notice how the light and colors behave up here.
- Sunsets and night skies from the rim — High altitude + minimal light pollution = some of the best sunset colors and stargazing you can get without trekking into the Arctic. Give yourself an evening on the rim to watch long, slow color shifts across the crater and, after dark, a sky full of stars that actually looks real.
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Hi, I’m Johan (Netherlands 🇳🇱), the creator of TakeYourBackpack. Over the past decade, I’ve backpacked through 80+ countries across six continents, gaining extensive experience with independent travel, long-term trips, and overland routes.