House Sitting and Hiking

My new home for six weeks

The title pretty much sums up the last few weeks.  I really liked the little house in El Ejido and the indigenous family I was renting from,  but I just couldn't take the barking dogs any more. There are probably ten of them on the family compound, and when one started barking, they all got barking - with several of them right outside my door.
Luckily my decision to move coincided with my friend Clare's leaving for the States to join her husband, who left earlier, and they wanted someone to stay in their place while they're gone. So for  6 weeks I'll be house sitting and taking care of their cat, Chiki. I'm much closer to the center of Cotacachi, so there's more traffic noise, but that doesn't bother me so much.

Here are a few shots of the interior.  On the 3rd floor are:

The Dining (and Computer) Area

The Kitchen - with a view

The Bedroom

On the second floor is the living room - but I hardly ever use it:

 There are some pretty awesome views from the windows here:

Mount Cotacachi at sunrise

The summit of Cotacachi a little later

Mount Imbabura from the bedroom window

Mount Fuya Fuya

On June 29th I set out after the clouds had lifted a bit- but did get caught in a shower (glad I had my poncho). I walked up, up, up to the village of San Pedro, then looped back down to Coatacachi by way of  El Cercado and Tunibamba.

In the village of El Cercado, more than one followed Maria to school one day.

Catasticta White Butterfly

Brick kiln in Tunibamba, where there are many. The village must have good clay soil.

The old Hacienda Tunibamba, falling into ruin.

On July 1st, about 25 miles from the equator, there was fresh snow on Mount Imbabura, which rises to about 15,000 feet:

 Snow is more common  on 16,000-foot Mount Cotacachi:

A Nice Clear View of Cotacachi

 The website is giving me problems, so I'm going to end this post here and hope the site works better for the next post.  Fingers crossed...