The Quilotoa Lagoon is an incredible place. It’s the crater of a long extinct volcano and now home to a majestic lake whose color is somewhere between emerald green and turquoise blue due to the dissolution of minerals. It’s a peaceful place and not too difficult to get to, provided you’re used to the altitude and don’t mind walking on sandy ground. It is possible to walk around the crater on the ridge (about 10 km) at an altitude of almost 4,000 meters and then descend to the (very cold!) water’s edge. I did both walks and this dog, who adopted me, accompanied me all the way down. At Quilotoa, our senses are stimulated in an unprecedented way, because in addition to the beauty of the place and the unique light at this altitude, the most striking thing is the unreal silence that reigns at the bottom of the crater. Opaque, dense, deep, a silence that leaves a strange sensation in the body, so unusual to hear on earth. As for the dog, a friend of mine went to the Quilotoa Lagoon years after I did, and on the same walk came across a dog that looked strangely like this one… I’d like to think it was the same dog, but maybe it was a brother or a cousin?