Another day, another mountain...

Landscape on the way to Cayombe
see all photos »

After spending a day or two in Quito we decided that we needed to escape the hustle and bustle of the city by conquering two of Ecuador’s largest volcanoes, Cayambe and Cotopaxi, and finish of by visiting the crater lake at Quilotoa.

Our first trip was to Cayambe. The summit is at a little under 6000 metres, but to be honest we only hiked up to 4700 metres where we had a quick break at the climbers’ refuge before heading back down to lunch. It was a great day even though it got off to a bit of a bad start when they were 45 minutes late to pick us up. The driver had a good excuse though - apparently the brakes weren’t working on the Jeep!!

see all photos »

We were accompanied on the trek by a Japanese TV crew who were doing research for a documentary that they are going to be making about South America. They told us that it’s going to be staring a BIG Japanese movie star. They didn’t tell us his name but I guess it doesn’t matter as we probably wouldn’t know who it was anyway!

Taking a break from the mountains for a day, we decided to check out the Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world). You actually have to make the trip twice (well three times if you believe the skeptics) because the position that the French originally worked out to be the middle of the world was actually found to be wrong ten years ago (damn that GPS!) The real middle of the world is located about 200 metres up the road!

Our transport!
see all photos »

We were lucky that we got there at all as we decided to follow some directions that were given to us by the woman at the tour operator and ended up taking a detour via the airport (a couple of days early) before getting back on track. I felt a bit bad as we had been joined by a couple of Aussies that we had met in the hostel and I think they were under the impression that we knew exactly where were going!!

Our first stop was the fake middle of the world. This used to be one of the biggest attractions in Ecuador but when we got there it turned out that we were pretty much the only people there! As we walked in we passed a whole lot of young Ecuadorians hanging out in front of the complex. We did the polite thing greeting them all with an ‘Hola!’ and they reciprocated with a ‘Good morning!’ all in chorus followed by a lot of giggling. Next thing we know two of the girls have rushed up and asked to have their photo taken with all of us, including a couple of stray Canadians we’d picked up along the way! It felt like we were movie stars, we thought they were going to ask for our autographs next! I guess this was pay back for all the tourists taking photos of indigenous people all the time.

see all photos »

Next we headed down to the real middle of the world (proved by GPS) where there is also a museum complete with a shrunken head, anaconda skin and one of the fish from the Amazon that you might of heard about… If you haven’t heard what these fish do then you might have to ask me later as this blog is PG rated but let’s just say, they are probably a man’s worst nightmare!!

The real middle of the world was definitely more interesting, complete with a demonstration of how water drains in a different direction on each side of the equator and a challenge to rest an egg on top of a nail. We all failed the challenge but the guide was successful - rigged!!

see all photos »

The next day we set off to conquer the mighty Cotopaxi volcano. The difference this time was that we would be mountain biking down it!! I know, sounds crazy doesn’t it?! Well try adding SNOW, HAIL, THUNDER and LIGHTNING to the mix! Because that’s exactly what happened.

After having lunch at the refuge and visiting the glacier, which didn’t look much like the pictures we saw at the tour agency (global warming, I guess) we headed off downhill on our bikes. These bikes were state of the art models, from the 1980s that is! The weather was fine though so we weren’t too worried. That didn’t last for long though. About five minutes into the trip down, light snow started to fall, followed by the hail, then the thunder, and then the lightning. Playing chicken with the lightning strikes was the last straw and luckily the guide ushered us all back into the jeep before someone became the gringo equivalent of roasted guinea pig on a stick!!

Coo-yee!!
see all photos »

It made for quite an adventure though, and we all survived to tell the tale. That night Em and I decided to stay at the tour agency’s hostel, which was a great little place complete with llamas, alpacas, sheep, rabbits and a cow, as well about 50 puppies running around the place (very cute but a bit hard to ship home!).

You would think we had had enough adventure from the previous day but the next morning we headed off to trek down to see the lake in the crater of the Quilotoa volcano. On this trek the mountain bikes were replaced by mules - I’m still trying to decide which were more dangerous!

The refuge
see all photos »

On the way we visited some indigenous markets selling everything from pigs and guinea pigs to drink flasks made out of alpaca feet (perfect stocking filler!) which, as you can imagine, was a barrel of fun for Emma. There was another parade as well along the way. I’m not too sure what it was for but this time it was just children marching in the parade. I felt a bit sorry for them as most of them looked like it was the last thing they wanted to be doing.

When we finally reached the lake we were a bit worried that we wouldn’t see much as there was a lot of fog but luckily as we climbed down into the crater the fog cleared to reveal the crystal clear blue lake nestled inside the crater, pretty cool!

Not a bad slope!
see all photos »

As we walked down, the mules that would be carrying us back up the mountain (we didn’t wimp out, it was compulsory!) would sprint down past us, nearly taking us out in the process. We were a little scared to see how energetic they were but happy at the same time as lunch was waiting for us at the top, so the sooner we got there the better!

We needn’t have been worried about the break neck speed they were doing because as soon as we hopped on their backs things changed! Emma’s mule was probably the slowest mule in the history of mules (it made up for it in the looks department though) and even though she started out about ten minutes before me I ended up overtaking her at the first turn and waiting for her at the top whilst watching the little girls who were leading her mule throw pebbles at its backside to make it move a little faster. Emma was a bit disturbed by this but there wasn’t much she could do. She was stuck half way up a volcano after all!!

Ice cave
see all photos »

Eventually she made it up to the top after about an hour and the mule was still alive, which was a bonus. At lunch I got to try llama for the first time which made up for the guinea pig that seemed to get away from me the whole trip. Oh well, maybe next time!