We - the crew from ZooBreviven - went to Laguna Cuicocha for our last day together. It was incredibly beautiful. It reminded me of our Crater Lake in Oregon. Although after some research, I discovered that Crater Lake is much bigger and deeper but that they are both caldera lakes formed by volcanoes.
A quick comparison of facts: Crater Lake is 5 x 6 miles and 1949 feet deep while Cuicocha is 2 miles across and 656 feet deep. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US and the 7th deepest in the world. Crater Lake is known for the "Old man of the Lake" because it has a tree bobbing in the lake, still living healthily, for over 100 years, due to the cool temperatures. Laguna Cuicocha means Lago de Cuye in the native language with Cuye meaning Guinea Pig. The bigger island looks like 2 guinea pigs. The natives cherish guinea pigs here and use them for a protein source, especially in the highlands. It is supposed to be rather tasty but I have not gotten the nerve up yet to eat one.
We hiked the entire way around the lake which took about 4 hours. We estimated the walk to be about 5 miles with a lot of ups and downs. At times we walked through narrow channels of old lava walls that are slowly being eroded down. These channels were easily 7 - 8 feet tall. I tried to take a picture of them with Santos but you really only can see one side of these high walls. At other points in the walk, we had open meadows and some dry terrain with cacti.
At the end of the hike, all of us ended up hitching a ride in a back of a pickup truck that had some fresh cheese they were delivering and we got to have a wonderful snack while getting a ride to the bus.
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