Cuicocha
Interesting facts
- The eruption that formed the caldera about 3,100 years ago buried the surrounding countryside under volcanic ash up to 20 centimetres deep.
- Ash from Cuicocha, Cotacachi, Imbabura, Mojanda and Cayambe built up the fertile soils that sustain farming in the Otavalo Valley.
- The two islands are made of four separate lava domes, and the narrow strait between them is known as the Channel of Dreams.
- The larger island honours Theodor Wolf, the German scientist who studied Ecuador's geology and volcanoes in the nineteenth century.
- The caldera walls are so steep that little sediment settles along the shore, leaving too little ground for most water plants to take root.
- The lake has no known outlet, and part of its eastern rim is an older lava dome dating from the Pleistocene.
- A survey in 1974 counted just 44 silvery grebes living among the reeds around the islands.
- During Inti Raymi, the Andean festival of the sun held at the June solstice, indigenous shamans bathe in the lake for ritual purification.
- Another Kichwa name for the lake, Tsuish Kucha, is often translated as the lake of the gods.
Why it is worth it
Cuicocha is a caldera lake about three kilometres across, sunk into the foot of Cotacachi volcano in the northern Andes of Ecuador. Its water fills a basin up to 200 metres deep, and from the rim, at 3,246 metres above sea level, two forested islands rise out of the middle like the backs of sleeping animals. Behind it rises the cone of Cotacachi, part of the Cordillera Occidental, the western chain of the Ecuadorian Andes.
The crater was born in violence. Roughly 3,100 years ago a major eruption at the base of Cotacachi sent out about five cubic kilometres of pyroclastic flows, leaving the great hollow that the lake now fills. Volcanic activity continued afterwards: the two islands, Teodoro Wolf, the larger, and Yerovi, the smaller, are domes of dacitic lava that pushed up inside the crater, and the last activity is dated to around 650 CE. The site's geological importance was recognised in October 2022, when it was named an IUGS Geological Heritage Site.
The name comes from Kichwa and has two readings. One version gives "lake of the guinea pigs", after the outline of the larger island, which resembles a crouching cuy; the other gives "rainbow lake". The lake marks the southern boundary of the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, and its waters are home to the silvery grebe, a diving bird of Andean lakes. The two islands are left to nature and are closed to the public, so the lake is seen from its shores and rim, where the full circle of the caldera can be taken in at once.
Getting there
Cuicocha lies in Imbabura province, about 13 km from Otavalo, the market town that serves as the main base for the area. The nearest international airport is Mariscal Sucre International Airport (UIO), serving Quito, about 47 km away in a straight line; the route north follows the Pan-American Highway towards Otavalo.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Cuicocha is a 3 km (1.9 mi) wide caldera and crater lake at the foot of Cotacachi Volcano in the Cordillera Occidental of the Ecuadorian Andes.
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