Cotopaxi and Mindo

Ho man, I was really busy last week and I didn’t have time to write a blog entry so this one should be a little longer. I’ll start from where I left off I suppose…

Two weeks ago I wasn’t really sure what to do over the weekend but I heard that some of my friends were going to be going to a nearby mountain, Cotopaxi and I was interested in that. On Friday my friend, Danny, went and checked out some climbing agencies around town and found that for a trip with a guía (guide) it costs $160. We were a little shocked that it cost that much but soon discovered that that was actually a pretty good deal because usually those trips cost from $180-250 and it included almost all the equipment and meals as well. I wasn’t planning on spending that much money because all the weekends before that I’d been spending about $100 consistently and needed to cut back. Eventually I decided to do it though because my main man, Alex, who studied abroad in Italy last year told me that some things are spendy but really are worth it in the end. I figured this was one of those things that would cost a lot but I’d be happy I did in the end.

I decided Friday night that I’d do it the next day so Danny gave me the packing list of 2 socks, 2 pants (not jeans), long underwear (which I brought thankfully), short and long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, sunglasses, sunscreen, stocking cap, gloves, 2 liters of water at least, snacks, 3 triple A batteries, and a backpack. We were told to have a good dinner that night and hydrate a lot and get good rest so I ended up getting to bed at 10 that night to meet at the climbing office (Yanasacha: means Black Mountain/Jungle in the Quichua language which is native to the Andean Region) which was a short walk from my house.

It turned out that there was going to be a group of 4 of us: my friends, Danny, Meghan, Carey, and me. We arrived at 10 and the climbing agency set us up with snow pants, boots, crampons, big gloves, jackets, ice picks, headlamps, sleeping bags, and these things called gators which we wrapped around our lower legs and part of the boots when we climbed. We were all set to go and they provided transportation for us to Cotopaxi but we stopped halfway there to pick up our two guides and have lunch. I ended up trying pig foot soup which was fairly tasty. It took us about 3 hours to get to the parking lot of the base camp which came after an extremely bumpy road which was not fun to be on with 4 people shoved in the back seat of a rather small camioneta (pick-up truck). When we got to the parking lot we still had to hike up to the actual base camp called el refugio (refuge). We saw some of our friends from school there coincidentally. They had just hiked up to el refugio and were about to mountain bike down Cotopaxi. We could see el refugio from the parking lot and it looked super close but apparently it took our friends about an hour and a half to get up there.

Getting our stuff ready next to our truck

View of El Refugio from the parking lot

Halfway up to el refugio. Needed a break

It ended up taking us about 35 minutes to get up there even though the guide said it was only 300 meters and that was with a couple breaks in between. I was sweating pretty good and breathing pretty hard at the end of it because the refugio itself is at about 4810 meters (15,780 ft.), more than enough to make it hard to breathe. We got up to the refugio which was right at the base of where it started to get really snowy. It turned out to be a big lodge with some tables downstairs and a few kitchens. Upstairs was filled with bunks stacked three high where all the campers would stay the night and try to get sleep before they left in the morning to climb the mountain. We got up there, put down our stuff, geared up, and went outside to get in some practice before we climbed the next day. Our guides spoke entirely in Spanish the whole time and we learned that the climb wouldn’t be very technically difficult but the main things to keep in mind were that we had to keep the pick in hand closest to the top and if we fell we had to spike the snow with the pointiest side and keep it far enough from our body so we didn’t gouge our eyes or body with the other end. We only had to do that a couple times on the actual hike on the way down.

El Refugio

Upstairs

La Cena (dinner)

After that we went back to el refugio and had some dinner that one of the guides, Diego, made. Right afterwards we went to bed at about 7pm hoping to get an hour or two (if we were lucky) of sleep before we got up at 12am to start our climb. I ended up getting almost 2 hours of pretty crappy sleep because the lodge was so loud with people walking around and talking all night. The guides said that was plenty though. Several times during the night I woke up and felt as if I was drowning. I guess I wasn’t breathing deep enough for the 4810 meters which is strange because anyone who has ever heard be breathe can confirm that I breathe plenty hard.

We got up at 12, ate and got ready, then departed at 1am which was after just about all of the other groups (there were about 40-50 other people climbing the mountain I think). We got going and after about 15 minutes I was starting to sweat which was no good. When you’re climbing a mountain you’re supposed to be going at a pace which is just below the sweat threshold. We stopped and I realized that I had put on long underwear, sweats, and my snow pants which was probably too much as well as a cotton T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and my thin snow jacket that didn’t breathe at all. I ended up taking off the cotton t-shirt and just wearing the polyester sweatshirt and jacket which made it a little better. We still had to go pretty slow so Danny (who was also sweating) and I ended up going at a slower pace than Meghan and Carey. About an hour and a half into the hike we got to a steeper part with a lot of grietas (crevices) so Danny, Diego, and I roped together for safety and proceeded from there. I still sweated a little at times but we took several breaks on the way up. I think we were still going at a pretty good pace because we ended up passing quite a few groups. I started doing a climbing technique where I’d take 7-11 steps up and get pretty close to Diego then rest for about 5-7 seconds then repeat that. I think it made it a lot easier for me. Another thing I tried to do was with each step, lock my knee every time. Danny was saying that this technique put a lot of the strain on your skeletal system as opposed to your muscular system, therefore conserving energy.

Danny took up the rear

Diego in front. Fun fact: Diego has climbed Mt. Everest! Said it took him 3 years to pay off the loan.

Other climbers in front of us at the start

Starting to get light

For the first 2 hours or so, we were climbing through clouds and snow but after that, we got out of the clouds and were able to see the stars for a while and even the far off lights of Quito. In total, it took us a little under 6 hours to reach la cumbre (the summit). The last part was definitely the hardest. We had to go up this hill which was probably like 60-70 degrees up with super squishy snow. It was pretty frustrating but we finally made it to the top. By this time, Meghan and Carey were already on their way down because their guide was in a rush to descend for some reason. We talked to them afterwards and apparently they made it up in 4 and a half hours which is pretty awesome because most of the time groups take at LEAST 6-8 hours to summit. They arrived before the sunrise and we arrived probably 30-45 minutes after the sunrise but it was still really cool to see. We got an awesome 360 degree view, most of which was obscured by clouds but was still incredible anyway. Once we got up there, I just let myself fall to the ground immediately. I was so tired. I needed an oreo snack pronto. Apparently this is quite common because the group that arrived after us ended up collapsing like I did when they reached the top.

Sun comin' up!

Taking a rest at the top

The crater

Danny and I

We stayed up there for probably a little longer than 20 minutes then started to head back down but not before I put on some sunscreen of course. For about an hour and a half, we were in the sun and it started to get a little toasty but the mountain in the daytime was gorgeous. The snow drifts, grietas, and walls of ice were fantastic to see up close and in person. After an hour and a half though we entered the cloudy region again which was pretty miserable. Going down the mountain was tough enough and probably more dangerous than climbing it because the snow got real soft and it was very easy to slip. The fog was so thick that I couldn’t see anything in front of Danny who was only 10 meters in front of me the whole time. I was wearing polarized sunglasses so if I hadn’t had those it would have been even worse. As we got closer to the bottom, we started slipping a lot more and ended up having to hit our crampons every couple steps because the snow would get stuck in them and we wouldn’t have any traction. That was pretty annoying. We went probably another hour and a half to 2 hours through the miserable clouds and finally made it down to el refugio where we could take a rest. We met up with Meghan and Carey who had been back for a while and rested for probably an hour before we had to gear back up again to go back down to the parking area which didn’t take very long but was still a pain because we were so tired. On the way there we had been chatting the whole time but on the ride back, we hardly said anything to each other because we were so tired. Even though the way down was fairly miserable (for Danny and I at least) and we were exhausted afterwards, we saw some amazing views and were all very happy that we did it.

Danny descending

Danny posing

Two posers

This part of the "trail" was about a foot wide with a huge cliff on the left

La pared de hielo (wall of ice)

ICE!

Before we got to the fogginess

Others descending behind us

The fogginess

On the school side of things, I’ve been taking a new set of culture and literature classes for the last two weeks and though 4 hours a day of the same classes can be a little much, for the most part, I really really enjoy them. We have two new teachers, Jacqueline and Gabby, who basically just chat with us the whole time. Lately we’ve been reading and talking about Incan history and the Conquista of Latina América. But that’s not the majority of the time. The majority of the class time we spend asking Jacqueline and Gabby random questions about things we did over the weekend, things that we plan to do, or about certain aspects of Ecuadorian/Latin American culture in general. For example, last Thursday, in four hours we probably spend a total of no more than 20 minutes talking about the subject material and the rest of the time was devoted to talking about the mysteriousness of the Ecuadorian jungle, how the change of currency from Sucres to the US Dollar affected aspects of life, as well as some talk about slang and swearwords in Ecuador. Our teachers are completely aware that we stray off subject a LOT but they that that is fine because the main reason we came to Ecuador is to learn the language and about the culture. In the end, almost all of the things we talk about when we get off subject are about Ecuadorian culture and are pretty relevant and interesting.

Last Wednesday I went to a soccer game spontaneously right after school at 6 at the nearby Estadio Olimpico Atahualpa. It was between Barcelona Sporting Club (from Guayaquíl) and Nacional from Quito. The first half of the game was pretty crappy because there weren’t all that many scoring chances and on top of that, it was raining pretty hard. It was just a group of 4 guys so and we all bought $1 rain ponchos that were basically big plastic grocery bags with holes in them. We ended up buying hot dogs for a $1.50 that had mayo, onions, tomatoes, mustard, and potato chips on them. In the cold weather, they were heavenly. At least in the second half the rain calmed down a little and there were some more good chances including a PK in the very last minute which was saved by the keeper and preserved the 0-0 tie. At the beginning of the second half the Barcelona fans started shooting off mortar shells from the stands FROM THEIR HANDS. My mother would have scolded them. It was about as exciting as a 0-0 game could get and the reason nobody scored was PROBABLY because I said at the beginning of the game that I would be pretty upset if it ended 0-0. Oh well. It was a good experience anyway. You might be wondering why there is a team called Barcelona in a town called Guayaquíl in Ecuador (or you might not be). Apparently it is the same organization as the Barcelona FC from Barcelona, España but they have a soccer school here in Ecuador for some reason that goes by Barcelona SC. Even though they aren’t from the city I’m staying in, I’m really tempted to buy one of their jerseys just because I think they look cooler than the other ones haha. At the game, there were tons of vendors selling Barcelona and Nacional knockoff soccer jerseys for $5. I was tempted to get one but I think I’m going to wait and buy a real one for $40 because they’re obviously better quality and look/feel better.

This weekend, I took a short trip to a small pueblo called Mindo in the cloud forest of central Ecuador which is about two hours away. It turned out to be just me, my friend Meghan, and another girl, Britney we met randomly in Baños a couple weekends ago who was from San Diego. Let me start by saying that this was a very bad and a very good weekend overall. We started out Friday morning by going to the south Quito bus terminal to try to find a bus that was going to Mindo. It takes about an hour to get their by public transportation and when we finally got there, we discovered that you actually have to go to the NORTH Quito bus station because Mindo is to the North. This was annoying so we took an hour and a half bus ride that SAID it would take us to the north station for a dollar. Keep in mind that Quito is an extremely long city (almost 40 kilometers I believe). It dropped us off on a street and said we were close to the bus terminal so we started walking down the main drag and didn’t find anything. We were asking people where we could find the Carcelen bus terminal and finally someone told us we needed to take another public bus in the other direction for about 5-10 minutes so we did that and ended up at another bus station which turned out to be a DIFFERENT bus station so we went back in the other direction and they dropped us off at a place called Carcelen which we soon found out was just a sort of district within north Quito. We were so frustrated at that point that we ended up just flagging down a taxi who knew where the Carcelen station was and we finally got there. We “luckily” (you’ll soon understand why this is in quotations) got a bus that was just about to leave for Mindo for $2 and we got on and were feeling pretty good. About an hour through the trip, we fell asleep and woke up just before we were about to get to Mindo. Meghan went to look in her backpack for something and realized that she didn’t know where her wallet was. We (or at least I did) immediately started to think the worst because we had been warned that theft was extremely common on buses. She then also realized that her jacket was also missing out of her backpack which had been at her feet the entire time. It was at that point that it really dawned on us that the guys behind us who we thought looked pretty shady had stolen her stuff without her knowing. It turned out that she had put all of her important things into the pocket of her jacket. This included $100 cash, her debit and credit cards, her iPod, cellphone, and her nice rain jacket and fleece jacket. Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. The guys had apparently gotten off at an earlier stop even before we fell asleep. Meghan then realized that when she was awake, she thought her bag had just fallen over at her feet when really it had been the two shady guys behind us that had tipped it over, unsnapped the buckle, loosened the tie, and taken her jacket from her backpack at her feet without her knowing. I felt terrible because I felt like it was something that we could have prevented. We realized they looked sketchy beforehand and didn’t warn each other. Right when we got on the bus initially, I turned around and noticed he had his face up against his seat and I thought it was strange and didn’t think anything of it. In retrospect, he was probably so far forward in his seat so he could reach under the seat sneakily to try to take our stuff.

This was frustrating enough but Murphy’s Law continued. We went and told the bus driver about what happened and that we were wondering when we were going to arrive in Mindo so we could notify Meghan’s bank immediately. He then told us that we had already passed Mindo a while ago and would have to wait for the next city. This was really frustrating because we told them that we were going to Mindo and they didn’t even bother to stop the bus even though they knew that. They just expected us to know when we got to Mindo and to tell them to stop the bus. We got off at a city about 30 minutes down the road and found a cabina for Meghan to call her host parents and her real parents so they could cancel her cards. We had no idea where we were and ended up asking a nice lady where Mindo was and she told us we could take a cab there for about $8. She flagged one down for us and sent us on our way. The cab ride turned out to be about 30-40 minutes which was shocking to us that we could get it for $8. The actual pueblo wasn’t on the main road we were on and had a turn off that went about 20 minutes down a hill to the town. This frustrated us even more because the bus company had us under the impression that they would be dropping us off at the actual town, not at a turn off to the town that would require a taxi or an hour long walk.

We finally got to Mindo at around 4:30 when we had planned to leave Quito at 10am and be to there by 1. Thankfully, some of our friends had been there weeks before and told us a good hostal to stay at which was basically a tree house. It was pretty cool and we got to stay there for $6 each for a night. Our friends also advised us to get a brownie at a nearby chocolate shop which turned out to be super good and definitely lifted our spirits after a crappy day. We didn’t have much time before sunset so we ended up just walking around town (which was very small). It stared to pour extremely hard and we ended up just sitting under a hut for a while so we didn’t have to be outside in it. Eventually we braved the downpour and went to find some dinner. Thankfully by the time we ate, the rain had subsided a little and we went back to our hostal. We ended up going to be super early (around 9 I think) and didn’t get up until 8 the next day.

Picture from the bus

Our tree house. Mosquito nets are fun!

The brownie place

Descansando (resting)

Pueblo of Mindo

Rain

Because Meghan was without her $100 and her debit/credit cards, we were left with the three of us having a little over $100 dollars total because I had only brought $50 and Britney had only brought a little more than that. This limited the things we could do there because the town only had several options of exciting things to do, all which required $5-10. We already had to pay for bus tickets back, food, and the hostal so from the canopy tour (zip lining), a waterfall tour, river tubing, and a mariposería (butterfly farm), we chose the canopy tour for $10 each. We had to take a 25 minute taxi ride up the side of a mountain/hill which cost another $3. The scenery was beautiful. Once we got there, we got the equipment and started off on the first of 13 zip lines. The zip lines were really cool because they took us high above the forest and we could look down and see trees and streams as we were zipping over them. There were two “maneuvers” that we could do other than the normal one where we just sat and zipped down the cable. They required the guide to accompany us and were called the mariposa and the superman. The mariposa would require us to face the guide and wrap our legs around him at first them when we got going, we could go down the cable upside down and the guide would separate our legs and we’d look sort of like a butterfly. The superman had us with our legs locked around the guide behind us and we’d zip across the cable with our chest to the ground and arms out like superman. The whole process took about two hours and we really enjoyed it. Our group went with a family that was vacationing from Chilé who were very nice. The father had actually made several trips to Seattle throughout his life and liked the city a lot. We decided to walk back from the Canopy tour instead of taking a taxi which took us through some nice areas including a river. It took about an hour to get back and so we still had time to get our stuff, a quick lunch and head out on the bus at 2pm back to Quito. We would have liked to stay longer and seen at least the waterfalls but we had to head back because we ended up only having a couple dollars between Britney and I by the end of the trip. The bus dropped us off at the first north bus station that we went to that we thought was the wrong one and after about a half an hour, we were able to find a public bus that would take us back to the part of Quito we needed to go to.

First zip line

Not sure what inspired this face

Mariposa minus outstretched hands

Our friend Britney

Our guide said this was a type of aguila (eagle)

Super man!

Couple Chileans and our canopy guides

Mindo from mountain

Helmet hair



Amusing chicken graffiti on the way back to Quito

The time period of a little more than one day was filled with stress and also some good moments. Meghan and I decided we needed some more brownies so we made some from scratch at her house for us and her parents and watched a pirated version of The Fighter (which I believe is still in theaters). It cost $1.50 from a store that sells pirated DVDS (there’s a ton of these all over Quito) and the quality was really good surprisingly. Next weekend I plan to either go to the jungle with my host mother and some friends or go somewhere else I’m not quite sure of yet. It’s all up in the air right now. Hopefully no more robberies or stress like this weekend though. Until I write again, chao!