Pan De Azucar

So I have finally summited my first mountain of some sort of altitude. he Mountain is called Pan De Azucar and the altitude at the summit is 4680 meters. It is 27 miles north of Merida in the Andes.
We set off from the agency in Merida at 8am on Monday morning all set with our tent, sleeping bags, lots of food, gloves, a lots of warm clothes. The climb on the first was not too difficult, the only issue was our bags on our back, although it was slighty lighter than it usually is was still giving us a challenge. Poor Anne had never had to trek with such a large bag before so was quite a test for her. We arrived at our base camp at arond 3pm in the afternoon tired but feeling good, we knew the end was in sight. I had been a bit nervous before the climb due to the fact that I have never really been at altitude before and felt dizzy two days before at 3600meters but once we reached our camp I knew I had nothing to worry about. My Asthma was fine and I felt really good. Our camp was set in the middle of a Valley at 4200meters. We had a guy from the US with us named Andrew so myself and Andrew decided to test some of the peaks in the Valley. We huked up for around an hour until our tent was barely a dot below us. I started to get a small headache so decended down but was nothing to worry about. At this stage we were fairly knackered and just wanted dinner and bed but our guide had different ideas. For some reason he wanted to wait till it was dark before cooking and then he realised he forgot his lighter for the stove. Anne realised that we have a mosquito bite reliever which gives off a tiny spark. We did not think it would work but 5mins later our pasta was boiling and we could think about a nice dinner. After dinner we went straight to bed high up in the Andes.
he folling morning it was time for the summit. This proved to a lot more difficult than the day before even though twe did have our gear with us. he temperature outside had dropped considerably since Merida and was close to zero so we were well wrapped up. he part was a steady incline for around 1.5hours which in its own right was pretty tough going, the quads were already burning up. After this incline we finally reached the base of the Summit which was quite daunting, I feel it was more of a climb than a trek but this is what I wanted. The steep climb was made even more difficult because of the surface that we were on, it was like walking vertically up sand that your foot just sinks into and you slip back down. So eventually we found our technuique and pushed up for another hour till we reached the summit. Was so happy to reach the summit and still feel like I had plenty of energy left over. I think I am fitter than I thought.
We spent 30 minutes on the top before negotiating our way back down. On the way down I got two huge blisters on both of my baby toes so instead of taking my time I jogged down most of the way to Base Camp where I could tend to my weary feet. We then packed up our gear and loaded our back again and followed the two hour trail back to the start of the climb. We then got a lift back to Merida and slowly made our way back to the hostel with Andrew.
So tonight we are going to try and make our way into Columbia with a couple of buses.

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