Cotopaxi & Quilotoa 2Day/1Night - Tours Included

Good trip! Great if you like physical challenges and beautiful scenery! Take altitude medication if you are not acclimatized to height! Recommend!

We enjoyed the tour though it was a lot of time in the bus. The buses were modern and clean, and comfortable. We had to be picked at 545 am at our hotel, so that was very early. The best part was the guides. A special th8nk you to Jackie who help my wife a LOT on the cold windy slopes of Cotopaxi on Saturday. She was wonderful! Also we really appreciated the service from Andrea and Jonathan. They were very enthusiastic !

This tour was run by Ecuador Hop - which meant that you were being picked up and dropped off at different places to join other groups who may not be with you the entire time. So, if you like getting to know and spending time with the same group of people for the entire trip. this may not be for you. This tour meant joining 2 different groups for day trips to Cotopaxi and Quilotoa and spending the night at a lodge. We were told to meet the bus at 6 am at Selina Hotel in Quito since we were staying at an Airbnb and the pick-up service only applies to hotels and hostels. I am not exactly sure why we had to be picked up so early, since we were driven to Chuquiragua Lodge for breakfast, and had to wait over an hour for the rest of the Cotopaxi day tour people to arrive. Why couldn't we have just joined the day tour in Quito? The Cotopaxi tour was fantastic, but they should have warned us that we would need to be adequately clothed and prepared to hike up the sanctuary (4800 meters above sea level). Luckily, we brought hiking sticks, boots, and gloves, but we were not prepared for the high winds and sleet with just our windbreakers and light downfills. We made it up, but it was tough going. Our guide, Paulina, was incredible. We would not have made it without her acknowledgment. (Make sure you bring your passports. It gets stamped up at the sanctuary as a reward for your efforts.) The trip next day to Quilotoa was equally fantastic. The lake was more incredible than what I anticipated, and our guide was very engaging. Unfortunately, this activity came right after the rigorous climb up Cotopaxi, so the hike up from the waters edge to the town, proved a little too much for us. We are pretty fit 50-somethings, but we knew it would have been tough going, so we opted (very guiltily) to take the horses up ($20 USD for 2 horses - they only come in pairs). Everyone else in our group walked up (most were young twenty-somethings). My biggest complaint about this tour are the "luxury" accommodations in the Viator description. The Chuquiragua Lodge is charming but it is not a luxury accommodation. We were also placed in a dorm situation which we did not like at all. We called Ecuador Hop, and they told us that we should have asked for an upgrade - which we would have gladly paid for, had we been asked. They did move us to a private room - so we were happy in the end. Meals in the lodge were great, and the people were charming, but WiFi in the rooms was non-existent, and amenities were a little threadbare. So, overall we were happy with this tour, but it does need a little more finessing and clearer communications from the operators so that people can manage their expectations and be prepared for what they find.