Latacunga

After our first visit to Quito, our next stop was Latacunga. This small city is on the main road from Quito in the North, to Cuenca in the South. Despite arriving the evening of the 18th of October and not actually leaving until the 23rd, we spent very little time in the city itself. We only used this destination as a base, first to visit the Cotopaxi National Park, and then to complete the Quilotoa Loop. I’ve written separately about these experiences, so please click on the links if you’d like to read about them. Given that we were barely there in the city, the only useful thing I can write about here is about transport links…

Getting to Latacunga

So as I’ve just mentioned, Latacunga is on the major route that runs through the centre of the country and thus is fairly easy to get to. We came from Quito and to do so, you first need to get to the Terminal Quitumbe. Quito has multiple bus terminals but if you are heading south, then your best bet will this one. From here buses to Latacunga are quite regular. You just need to be careful which one you get. We didn’t know this before we got the bus down but there are two major places where buses stop for Latacunga. The first is the main terminal in the centre of town. If you are staying in Latacunga, then it will almost certainly be easier for you to arrive to this terminal. We were lucky and this is where our bus ended up. The second destination drops you off on the main road bypassing the city. Here, you either need to get a taxi for twenty minutes to get into the centre of the city, or start a really long walk. We unwittingly ended up here after our visit to Cotopaxi and there was a taxi waiting near by but this is not always the case and Uber does not work in the vicinity. So before you get a bus to to Latacunga, make sure that it will drop you off at the terminal.

Leaving Latacunga

We got buses leaving Latacunga on three separate occasions. The first two were for our trips to Cotopaxi and for the Quilotoa Loop. Buses for these destinations left from the central terminal and we had no problems with them. Our third bus was when we were leaving Latacunga to continue our travels as we moved on to Banos. We again went to the central terminal but ended up having a bit of a nightmare. I’m going to explain what happened in more detail in my next blog post, but it basically boils down to the two places you can get a bus. Buses from the central terminal do not go directly to Banos and they take you on a crazy route with unnecessary transfers. And what no-one told us when we were in the terminal, asking for help, is that there is a second way that we found out later. There are buses that go directly from Quito to Banos and pass by Latacunga but they do not stop at the terminal, they use the bypass. So I guess this is why no-one told us, as this is when it gets tricky. There is no bus stop on the bypass and thus there is no timetable for when the buses will be there. And yet, we had such a nightmare with the other option that we definitely think it is worth trying to work out when the buses depart from Quito and coincide your arrival at the bypass when you think the bus will be passing by. There is a path where you can wait that attaches the main road to the road that goes to Latacunga city centre. Another issue you need to consider is that there is no guarantee that there will be any available seats left but we still think it would be worth the risk.

Final thoughts

So that is the only useful information I can pass on about Latacunga. It seemed like a pleasant enough small city; it had a central square that is nice enough and the couple of places from where we got food were decent. But in terms of tourism it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than what it is – a base to visit other places near by. Having said that, both Cotopaxi and Quilotoa can both be visited on day trips from Quito but we wouldn’t recommend it. We were happy with our decision to do them properly from Latacunga, so we are glad that we came.