Mount Cotopaxi, Ecuador Vacations, Mount Cotopaxi, Ecuador Vacation Reviews, Tourism Guide

Mount Cotopaxi

Is Ecuador's highest active volcano at 5897m, located in the Eastern Cordillera. It is a stratovolcano (very similar to Mt. Fuji or Mt. Sashta) with an almost perfectly symmetrical cone, rising from a highland plain of 3800m and covered by a mighty glacier starting at a height of 5000m. The side of the cone has deep valleys scoured by lahars. The summit crater is 600m x 800m in diameter and several hundred meters deep. Its geographical location is 0.677°S and 78.43°W, some 60 km southeast of Quito and 15 km northeast of Latacunga, provincial capital of Cotopaxi province.

This majestic volcano forms the crown jewel of the Avenida de los Volcanes, named so rightly by Alexander von Humboldt, the German naturalist, who visited Ecuador at the beginning of the 19th century. Several active and dormant volcanoes in the Western and Eastern Cordillera dot this stretch of road leading from Quito to Riobamba.