I {heart} Parque Nacional Cajas.

The smartest thing I have done on this trip (so far) has been to hire a guide for a private tour of Parque Nacional Cajas. Doing it with a group would've only given me a glimpse into the beauty and variety the park offers, and I suspect that doing it alone would've been disappointing given all the things I learned today from my guide.

Which are too many to mention, but here are some highlights:

- Highest point is Tres Cruces at 13,667 feet (this is where we started the hike today), it's a kind of memorial site with three crosses where people put stones to commemorate the dead.

- There are over 800 lakes in the park's 28,500 hectares (what's that in acres?); about 250 of the lakes are big enough that someone bothered to name them, the rest have no name. The water from this park provides 60% of Cuenca's water supply. It is so clean that you could drink it from the stream if you wanted (I didn't), and unlike the rest of Ecuador there is no need to boil water here before consuming it. The government puts a lot of effort into protecting this park because of the water... We had to stop at two control areas before entering this morning. Guides are strictly regulated and required for many of the public hikes.

- The park is a natural pharmacy. Many of the flowers and fauna are used by locals to treat everything from headaches to GI issues to prostate problems. The main pharmaceutical fauna are species of asters, valerian and ginseng. I had no idea asters were pharmaceutical.

- I also had no idea that prohibition extended beyond the US in the 1920s. The guide pointed out a trail used by locals to transport alcohol back in the day. (Guess our high school junior homecoming float could have had multicultural flappers...?)
- There are three species of toucans that live in the highlands. The guide in the other cloud forest said there was only one species. I got a photo of the one that day and saw none today so I'm not sure who to believe. :)

And blah blah blah. Those are the main things I would like to remember other than what I was able to capture in photographs...

... like the Harry Potter enchanted forest ...

... and this cute little guy

Diego, my guide, completely restored my faith in guides today - he grew up hiking, camping and fishing in the park with his grandfather and father so we went places most people don't even know about, he seemed to know everything about everything, and he was very patient with my nonstop questions and photography. We shared similar appreciations of ancient cultures and the virtues of natural spirituality (animism of sorts, that everything from lakes to moths to rocks has a soul and deserves respect). And the personal stories he shared of his childhood and time with his grandfather made the experience really special for me.

that's Diego

(He has done tours in the Galapagos too - and prefers not to, from the sound of it. It seems that my bad experience is the norm rather than the exception.)

It was an overwhelmingly positive day of nature + culture, and I'm still sad about leaving Ecuador but I am looking forward to the Inca Trail even more now. Need to figure out how to have more days like this when I return to real life this summer...