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Published: March 11th 2009
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....Terry's second blog....
Our first stop in Ecuador was in the town of Otavalo & we arrived just in time for it's famous Sunday market. The market was a bit touristy but nonetheless was incredibly colourful & had all sorts of handicrafts. We bought a few bits but had we been near the end of our trip we probably would have fleeced the place. We spent a few more days there hiking around the crater lake of Cuicocha & seeing Condors in a reserve & then we moved on to Quito.
Quito was one the few capital cities we spent time in. We took a bus out to the "Midad del Mundo" (middle of the world) monument. Surprisingly there was nobody with buckets of water & sinks doing the water trick but we soon found out why. The monument was built to mark the equatorial line that was measured about 150 years ago. Unfortunately they were out by about 200m but some clever locals set up a quirky museum down the road, right on the equatorial line where we could do our water tests, shoot a blow pipe & see a shrunken head.
We spent some time seeing
Quito & organising a trip to Galapagos & then we left for Cotopaxi. Cotopaxi is a popular volcano climb in Ecuador. At 5897m it's the highest active volcano in the world & the second highest mountain in Ecuador. To put that into some sort of perspective the highest mountain in Europe is Mount Blanc at 4810m.
As soon as I read about it I was mad to give it a go & I dived in and booked a trip before I really did my research. The guide books all said it you didn't need any expertise but warned about the need to acclimatise.
The day before we took the trip we took a cable-car up to a park above Quito. The park is at an altitude of around 4300m. As soon as we reached the top the air felt very thin & when we went for a walk we were breathing heavily, getting light headed & we had to stop for a breather ever 20 minutes. At this stage I was starting to regret signing up for Cotopaxi trip. When we got back down to Quito I did a bit of reading up on altitude sickness & acclimatisation
The Andean Condor
In a rehab for birds of prey, Parque del Condor. & I was getting a bit worried.
We left for Cotopaxi, meet our guide Milton & made our way to our cabin before taking a short hike around the park. This was at 3650m & the highest altitude we'd spent the night at. Already we were feeling the effects, with mild headaches, insomnia, & peeing every 20 minutes!
By the morning the headaches had gone but it was time to move on up the the refuge at 4800m. We travelled up in a van but it was snowing heavily & the van had to stop short of the car park at 4200m. The hike up to the refuge took about 2 hours & was hard going carrying all our gear & food. The air was really thin & by the time we got to the refuge we both had headaches & were feeling crap from the altitude.
After lunch & feeling better we went out with Milton to try out the ice axes & crampons & climbed up to the glacier at around 5000m. We were climbing really slowly but at that altitude my heart was racing like I was in full sprint & I was panting
for breath. We both had headaches & Fran was getting dizzy & blurred vision and we were both relieved when Milton said that was enough for now.
The plan was to get to bed early & get up at midnight & start the climb to the summit while the snow was still hard. Later that evening we were both still feeling terrible & getting bad headaches. Fran wasn't overly impressed with me for persuading her to take on the climb (that's putting it mildly).
After our hike around the glacier that evening we both knew that we wouldn't make it much higher than the glacier before the bad headaches kicked in & when you get headaches at altitude you can't just push on climbing higher, it's too dangerous. After dinner, with some disappointment but a lot more relief, I told Milton that we didn't want to attempt the rest of the climb to the summit that night & asked if we could go hiking lower down in the park the following day rather than going for the midnight climb.
That evening we were both relieved & even more so that night. Neither of us could sleep a
wink. Altitude is strange. It makes you tired but also gives you insomnia. To top it off we had headaches & at least every hour we had to crawl out of the sleeping bags to go for a pee, another effect of the altitude.
At midnight the others in the refuge were up & left for the climb. Within two hours they started coming back after getting dizzy or finding their breathing too difficult. Out of 10 or 12 that went for it that night 3 made it to the top.
At first light we packed up & headed down the mountain & went hiking through the park for the morning. The park itself was amazing but we had taken & awkward & expensive way of seeing it, and got a costly lesson in climbing big mountains at really high altitudes.
That afternoon it was back to Quito for a good feed. The follow day I went to the dentist with my tooth-ache that had been niggling for months & without much hesitation the dentist pulled out one of my wisdom teeth. All in all, not the best few days of our trip but in two days
we would be off to Galapagos & much much better times were ahead.
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