Cayambe Coca National Park

If you come to Papallacta, do not be lazy and spend half a day in the National Park Cayambe Coca. It's territory inhabited by bears, foxes, deer, rabbits, condors, hawks and other animals. Actually, we were planning to see someone, even in the distance. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit rainy and we saw no one. However, the area is picturesque and quite deserted.

Unfortunately, there were no normal maps of the park in 2014. We walked here using this map :)

And here are some tracks that allow you to navigate and plan visits to the park.

Track 1
Track 2
Track 3

As can be seen on the tracks, the park has two entrances. One is 5 kilometers from the hotel Papallacta Therme (let's call it main), and the second one (futher), which is located near the road to Quito. You can negotiate with the taxi driver and ask him to drive you to the futher entrance. It's located upper then the main entrance, so you can walk downhill (track). Take the phone from taxi driver, so he will pick up you at the main entrance.

We did not have time for a long walk, so we just agreed for $20 to go to main entrance and return from that place in 4 hours.

At the entrance you need to register by telling your name and country. Further, there are two directions: to the lake Loreto or to the lake Baños and in both directions you need to go uphill. First we went to Loreto, barely found the path to the lake.




Initially we went on the wrong path and hopefully we had off-road shoes :)


Then came back to the entrance and went along another road to the lakes Banos.






Getting there: By taxi from Papallacta ($10). Entrance can be reached on foot, but you need to walk about 5 km uphill.