Laguna Mojanda

Last Saturday we were invited to go up to a lake high up in the nearby mountains called Laguna Mojanda. Otavalo sits at about 8500 feet, and the lake is at 12,125 feet above sea level. Needless to say, it was a bit chilly. It was a beautiful day down in Otavalo, but a bit chilly up that high. It was gorgeous, though, with steep craggy mountains all around. We tried to do a bit of fishing, but nothing was biting and the wind started to pick up so we gave up. Maybe it was because they were using smashed up bread as bait...

Here is Jorie, crouching down in the high grass to get away from the wind as much as possible. All of the ground around the lake was very spongy and had very interesting mossy and grassy plants. We also saw a lot of animal droppings that looked like rabbit, but didn't see anything. We were told that an animal that looks like a llama but smaller lives up there.

Here is a kind of pea plant that we saw, with very pretty flowers. The peas tasted somewhat bitter, but definitely had a pea-like taste.
A couple of other shots of the lake and the tall grass. This lake was a smaller one a little higher up. We took the kids bushwacking through this tall grass, and they enjoyed it, more or less. Every now and then we would see something that was a cross between a cactus and a aloe vera plant. Luckily none of the kids took a nose dive into one.

We drove up to the lake in the back of a pickup truck, owned by an american guy named Kerry who just moved to Otavalo to design and build kitchen cabinets. Very nice guy. A guy from the ward came as well, Santiago Andrade, who is a lawyer. He helped us to understand some of the documentation things that we needed to do after arriving.