This tour is available in two options: Shared and Private. The private option offers you greater convenience and flexibility of time.
You will be picked up from your hotel (or closest pick-up point) in Quito and taken in a private air-conditioned vehicle for a trekking tour to the Antisana Ecological Reserve. The drive takes about two hours. An English-speaking guide will accompany you on this tour.
Drive southeast from Quito for about an hour, covering approximately 60 kilometres, and then begin the climb up the Antisana volcano, Ecuador’s fourth largest volcano. Admire the spectacular scenery on the way up with close-up views of a massive glacial moraine, said to date back to some 11,000 years. As your vehicle climbs higher on a good paved road, you can feast your eyes on the spectacular scenery with jagged rocky peaks and the glacier-covered summit above the tree line.
You will ascend upto 4000 metres above sea level to where the Reserve is situated. On arriving at the Reserve, you will begin your trek, covering a distance between 1 to 5 kilometres across the Reserve. The ground is fairly level and you can observe the beautiful but small paramo flowers growing close to the ground among the lichens and paramo straw, gentians, red Indian paintbrush, orchids and chuquiraguas. A great variety of birds can be spotted around the many paramo lakes and ponds, such as the highly endangered black-faced ibis, cinereous conebills, brown speckled teal, Andean lapwings, many carunculated caracaras, black wing doves, and the rare siskin. The trek will last for approximately two hours.
Enjoy a packed picnic lunch in the Reserve.
After lunch, drive back to Quito amid breathtaking settings. At the end of the tour, you will be dropped back at your hotel/closest drop-off point in Quito.