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Published: August 31st 2007
The five of us!
Me Janine James Konrad and CotopaxiHi Everyone
Hope everyone is ok (coping without me - a toughie I know!)
I have another cracking weekend to report on. On Saturday 25th August, Konrad, James, the lovely Janine (from Birmingham - can you believe they let more than one of us into the country?) and myself all headed to the beautiful and very famous Volcano Cotopaxi. The summit is 5,911 m above sea level, so it is by no means the largest Volcano in Ecuador, but if any of you have seen me run for the bus you'll know that looking at it was enough to send my knees to Jelly.
We hired a driver to take us a good distance up the Volcano (this was not being lazy, its the norm for non mountain climbers!) We were dropped at a spot from which you can start your ascent up the face of the volcano. Don't get me wrong I have not transformed into some kind of amazing outdoorsy mountain hiker, when I say ascent I mean a very slow 300m (aprox) climb and when I say "face of the volcano" I mean a set route up to a log cabin that serves hot chocolate. Saying
that is was not an easy 300m and due to the altitude and the practically vertical slope it took over and hour to get up and about 20 mins back down (that was fun!) I was kitted out with two jumpers, gloves, hat, scarf and most importantly Camera. It was soooo cold but incredibly beautiful!
We decided to head straight from Cotopaxi to the "city" of Latacunga, which was about 2 and a half hours away. We headed for the bus station only to discover that the bus had gone. We were quickly approached by a man with a very rickety old car and a charming smile. He offered us a lift and as there were four of us we accepted for 4 dollars each. Of course when he had us in the middle of know where he started to up the price. Once again Super Konrad was haggling our case and all seemed to be settled, although he later told me that the guy had been spouting some very strange comments!!! We arrived in Latacunga and were pretty much unanimous in the decision that we did not want to stay there. It was getting quite late (about 8
o'clock) but we decided to try and get a lift to our destination of Quillatoa, who do think rolls up but our Johnny Bananas Driver from earlier! Still not quite sure on the reasoning behind our decision but we got back into the car with Psych Bob! He started to drive us through the mountains and once again with the evening fog rolling in in the middle of nowhere he starts to up the price and moan about the distance etc. This guy was a real piece of work. We finally arrived and Quillatoa in the thickest mountain fog ever. We paid our new "friend" and he gave me his phone number...a real piece of work! We headed for the nearest light we could see and managed to strike gold. We found the nicest hostel ever in a town with about 10 buildings. It was run by a local family and each room had a little log fire and shower, everyone in the hostel ate dinner together, which included a pudding as well. It made the journey from hell worth it.
After a very good nights sleep we all headed to Quillatoa Lake, which is a huge Crater Lake.
Not content with "scaling" the volcano the day before we hiked down to the waters edge in the crater. Not and easy walk either and it took about 40 minutes into the crater and 1 hour back out again. But we did get to have a sunbath on the lakes small beach and do a bit of Kayaking on the lake itself. We were the only four people on the water at the time! It was pretty Great!
Once again we slept the whole way back to Quito.
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isabel & bernard
non-member comment
it sounds so exciting!!!!
Hi babe it is so exciting to read yourblogs we can hardly believe the stuff you are doing! What happened to the girl who wouldn't eat veg and only dolmio pasta sauce????? coy indeed! Keep safe missing you loadsxxx