The sky is the limit

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The day started with a short ride to Machachi to the La Estachion, which is a hostria (kind of like mini hacienda).  At the hostria, there was a museum and a farm.  We started with a tour of the hacienda and learned about different games kids used to play.  Our wonderful hosts, Ludovico and his wife, were very gracious and had fun playing with the kids.  After our tour of the hacienda, we headed down to the farm.  Once at the farm, we were greated by one of their beautiful horses who happens to be pregnant and will be giving birth to first foal at the farm.  Then Ludovico called his little friend Atilla, a goose, and showed us how friendly he was and what a great singer Atilla was.  We were then introduced to another horse and a donkey and could go for a short ride.  We had the opportunity to play with llama, sheep, alpacas, llamingo, mini horses, ponies, rabbits, dogs, pigs, chickens and peacocks.  They also have a pregnant buffalo who is pregnant and they kids were lucky enough to witness an ultrasound of the buffalo and found out the baby is going to be boy.  From the farm we headed back to the hacienda for lunch, which everyone enjoyed.

After lunch, we loaded up on the bus and headed to Cotopaxi which was a little over 2 hours away.  We picked our local guide Paulina and headed to the lagoon.  We learned that Cotopaxi is an active volcano and when it wasn't raining or covered by clouds, we could see the steam coming out of the crater.  We learned that the lagoon was located at around 19,000 above sea level.  We walked around the lagoon and learned about local fauna and some of it's medicinal uses.  It was rather cold on our walk, but warmed up once we were back on the bus and heading to Banos the the Hacienda Leito, for the night. 

This hotel is located on the side of a mountain - and a very windy road to get to it.  They had dinner ready for us on arrival.  After dinner, the kiddos had some time to hang out and talk with other before going to bed.  One interesting thing about this hotel was the rooms were heated with a wood burning fireplace to keep us cozy. 

We are looking forward tomorrow to continue our journey into the Amazon.