Estamos subiendo

After a week in beautiful, but noisy and hectic, Quito, it was time to get out of the city to see some of Ecuador's countryside.  A tour operator called ECTravel came to our Spanish school last Wednesday to pitch a weekend trip to Quilotoa Lake, which is in a volcanic crater, and Cotopaxi National Park, and Magge and I eagerly signed up.

We were part of a group that included one American, three Germans (they're everywhere down here), two Finns, a Swiss and a Swede.  Before we left for this trip, Magge and I were a little wary of being around young, obnoxious travelers, since most backpackers tend to be in or just out of school, but it was a great group of people.  We left early Saturday morning, and it felt great to escape the urban sprawl.  There were clear skies throughout the drive and incredible vistas to the left and right of the bus.

Shortly after leaving the city limits, we took this picture:

Between Quito and Latacunga, the green valley floor stretched between the Cotopaxi volano to the east and Illiniza volcano to the west.  By the time we reached Latacunga, the green, forested landscape gave way to a brown and rocky landscape covered with scrub, cacti and agave plants.  In Latacunga, we briefly stopped to visit the food market, and Magge should be writing a post in the next day or two on that experience.  Once we left, we went straight to Quilotoa lake, and it was one of the most spectacular drives I've ever witnessed.  Fifteen minutes after leaving the market, we went straight up a mountainside via switchbacks and ascended 2,000 ft (my guess).  Once we got over the mountain pass, what seemed like an entirely different world appeared, as seemingly barren and desolate peaks filled the horizon.

The bumpy road took us around rocky outcroppings, past locals walking their donkeys and sheep, and was full of hairpin turns.  I have to admit that I clenched my cheeks pretty hard through every one of those turns, which our bus driver took at speeds that I never would.  Every mile or so, we would pass a pig or a cow tied up on the side of the road, grazing on the brown grass.  I've seen pigs and cows before, but for some reason this seemed like a new experience.

We managed to get to the lake without getting t-boned over a cliff, and I took two steps before I started feeling a little light-headed.  The lake sits around 13,000 ft, which I'm pretty sure was the highest I had ever been at that time.  After a quick lunch, we took some pictures of the lake and prepared ourselves for the hike around it.  When ECTravel sold us this trip, nowhere did they mention the words strenuous, difficult, tough or any other synonyms.  Magge and I assumed it was going to be a nice, leisurely hike around a pretty lake.  That's why we are smiling in this picture - we had no idea what was about to hit us.

The first thirty minutes of the hike were not too bad, and everyone laughed about how easily out of breath we all got.  Then our guide said we had to hike up this:

"This one goes to 11"

The German guy in our group thought the guide was joking, but I knew he wasn't.  It's difficult to tell from the picture, but this ascent, called The Heartbreaker, goes all the way to the peak.  About halfway up, we took a break and everyone sat resting looking over the paramo (Andean grassland).  Nobody said a word and all we could hear was the wind and the bleating of the sheep in valley below.  At this point I had a moment that I hope I have often throughout this trip; it was a moment when I thought "this is why I'm doing this trip".  That moment evaporated in less than five minutes as we resumed the climb and I cursed the altitude and the mountain and concentrated on not passing out.

I was amazed at how close the narrow trail was to the crater's precipice.  I could be wrong, but I don't think American parks have trails like this.  Due to our well-developed tourist infrastructure intent on making everything as accessible as possible, as well as the combination of our litigious culture and abundance of idiots, I can't see this level of danger being present in our national and state parks.  While I appreciate how easy it can be access sites in the US or Canada, the experience of walking over a thousand of feet right over this crater lake blew me away. 

About halfway through the hike, the clouds rolled into the crater, literally.  They were lower than the mouth of the crater, so as they approached, they crept up the mountain side, and then spilled into the giant hole.  Before we knew it, we were surrounded by clouds.

As we made our way around the crater, the surrounding environment kept changing: we went from just grass and low bushes to pine forests to deep sand that looked like it had been imported from southern Florida beaches.  The only thing lacking was native animals; the only animals we saw were domesticated ones being herded.

Nearly six hours after we started, we made it back to the trailhead.  We ate dinner and went to bed early, under four wool blankets to keep us warm from the cold Andean night and the lack of heating in the hostel.  I woke up the next morning feeling extremely nauseous, a symptom of altitude sickness (or soroche in Spanish).  The group was headed to partially climb Cotopaxi, one of the tallest active volcanoes in the world, and I didn't know if I was going to make it.  I decided to push myself since I had planned to rest a few days in Baños.

Another two hours of bumpy roads got us to the parking lot 3,300 ft below the cabin that climbers going to the peak use for acclimatization, and the plan was to climb those 3,300 ft.  My chest felt bruised halfway and I sat down for a breath.  I could see the cabin from that vantage point and was convinced that I could do it, and climbed another 600 ft before getting too dizzy to walk.  At that point, I was roughly at an altitude of 15,000 ft - the highest I had ever been in my life and higher than the tallest peak in Colorado.  I sat down again and waited to regain my bearings, but it didn't happen and I decided to call it quits.  It was a disappointing decision, but the safer one.  I felt awful for the rest of the day, but the whole weekend was definitely worth it.

Group shot in front of Cotopaxi.  Magge doesn't know this (yet), but I thought I was going to vomit at this point.

Moonscape from the slopes of Cotopaxi

My descent, which I barely remember