Cotopaxi National Park

Cotopaxi National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Cotopaxi is the perfect snow cone south of Quito, two hours from the capital, and it is Ecuador's most visited park, sold from the city in day tours that reach a height most people have never been to. The standard full-day tour drives to the park, stops at the Limpiopungo lagoon on the páramo for the reflection of the volcano, drives up to the car park at 4,600 metres and walks the steep hour to the José Rivas refuge at 4,864 metres, with the glacier a little above, before lunch in a hacienda and the return; it is a hard walk at that altitude and the tours pace it. The hike-and-bike versions ride mountain bikes down the volcano road from the car park to the lagoon, which is the most enjoyable descent in the country, and the horseback tours ride the páramo from the haciendas at the park edge.

The combination tours pair Cotopaxi with the Quilotoa crater lake in a very long day, or with the Papallacta hot springs or the equator monument, and the multi-day tours on the Avenue of Volcanoes continue to Baños. Climbers book the two-day summit climb with a certified guide, a night at the refuge and the midnight start, through the Quito mountaineering agencies; the summit at 5,897 metres needs crampons, acclimatisation and luck with the weather. The park entrance is free, with registration at the gate, and the tours include the transport and the guide. Independent visitors need a car or a taxi from Machachi or Latacunga, and the Sunday market at Saquisilí fits.

Visiting Cotopaxi National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1975 and covers about 334 square kilometres of páramo and volcano south of Quito, dominated by Cotopaxi, at 5,897 metres one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and the most beautiful in the Andes, a symmetrical cone under a glacier cap that is visible from the capital on clear mornings. It last erupted from August 2015 to January 2016, when the park closed and the ash fell on Quito, and its eruptions of 1742, 1768 and 1877 sent mudflows down the valleys as far as the coast; it is watched constantly and the park closes when it stirs. The páramo around the base is high grassland at 3,500 to 4,000 metres, with tussock grass, cushion plants and the chuquiragua flower, where wild horses graze, Andean foxes and deer are seen, and the condor, the caracara and the Andean gull are the birds;

the Limpiopungo lagoon lies below the Rumiñahui volcano, whose jagged crater is the park's second summit, and the Inca fortress of Pucará del Salitre stands on the plain. The road climbs the volcano's northern flank to the car park, and the trail to the José Rivas refuge, a stone hut where the climbers sleep, and the glacier tongue at about 5,000 metres above it are as high as most visitors go, in thin air and cold wind with the whole Avenue of Volcanoes spread below. The haciendas at the park edge, some of them old Jesuit estates, are the places to stay, and the Cotopaxi railway station at El Boliche is the stop for the tourist train from Quito.

Cotopaxi National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from 8 am to 3 pm for entry, with visitors out by 5 pm, and it closes when the volcano's alert level rises. The dry season from June to September is the clearest, with the best chance of seeing the summit, though the winds are strongest then; December and January are also often clear, and the rainy months from February to May bring cloud on the peak by mid-morning and snow at the refuge.

Mornings are always clearer than afternoons, so the tours reach the refuge before the cloud. Altitude is the constraint: a night in Quito at 2,850 metres before the trip helps, and the walk to the refuge is slow. Allow a full day, or two days for the climb. Quilotoa is two hours south, Baños three, and the Chimborazo reserve is the next volcano on the avenue.