Wednesday, March 9, 2022

Cajas NP and the highest growing tree

 About an hour from Cuenca, there lies Cajas Nationale Parc (National Park for those not fluent in espanol).  It is unique in Ecuador in that it is composed of hundreds of glacial lakes (puddles?) set among the high grassland of the Andes.  Only 3% of the Andes in Ecuador are composed of high grassland.  

So again, I hired tour guide with another customer and set off to do a little hiking in this high grassland.  And it didn't disappoint, as it was quite different than other places I have been in Ecuador-






And there also appeared some non-spitting lamas (the guide said only lamas in Peru spit at tourists, though I am not so sure)-




We were quite lucky with the weather as the guide indicated that it is often misty here at this time of year (i am familiar with that).  He stated that the clouds build up from the Amazon basin and then also come over from the Pacific and then join to often create a cloudy misty landscape.  

This also represented the Continental Divide in this part of Ecuador (elev- 4241 meters), roughly 180 miles from the Pacific but over 3000 from the Atlantic.  We also saw the tree that grew at the highest elevation in the world-






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