Cajas Natiional Park is at very high altitude, 3000 metres, on the continental divide of Ecuador. Cajas NP has many types of terrain. Our first hike was in the lower part of the park in a glacial valley. We hiked around a lake through grasslands and forest. In the forested area we were very lucky to see a masked trogon, a large brightly colored bird.
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| This lake is in the lower altitude part of the Cajas Park. |
In the highlands there is very little forest apart from polylepsis trees, which they call "paper" trees due to the way they shed their papery bark to keep epiphytes from growing on them. There are hundreds of small lakes in the park, and the main plant that covers the land is grass
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| This is one of the high altitude lakes and was at the begnning of our second hike |
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| Typical balloon flowers of the highlands |
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| This beautiful spiky bromeliad is also very common |
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| Close up of the wet grasses that cover most of the land in the highlands of Cajas |
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