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Ok so those of you who noticed a touch of brashness in the last blog (and that i guess depends on if anyone actually read the last one) maybe hoping that the main character - me gets a touch of come-up-ance. Well don´t worry you are in luck.
I just have two words for you: Altitude Sickness!
So anyway the day starts like any other. I get up pack my walking boots, crampons, sky coat, harness, water proof trousers and my ice pick into a bag and head for my pick up point.
From there we drive to Cotopaxi. During the drive we talk in Spanish about politics, football and many other topics. I say many other topics because my vocab seems to extend reasonably well on the first two topics and after that if some one wants to talk about what my favourate band is, if i want to eat anything or basically where i've lived my spanish evapourates into "Que", "Pardon" or useless shrugs!
Anyway we arrive at the carpark in the national park of Cotopaxi. From there we hike up from 4,700 meters to about 5,000 meters to the refuge. (Just to put this
in scale Mount Blanc - the tallest mountain in Europe is 4,810 metres, Cotopaxi's summit is at 5,900 meters). It´s about 3pm so there is still quite alot of time to kill before bed time and our 12am start time. So we play cards, annoy other climbers by claiming to be exceptionally skilled mountaineers (when we are obviously not) and eat whatever dinner provided for us is!
So we hit the sack around 7:30. First things i barely get any sleep, since the guy in the bunk below snores in tonnes that can only be desribed as worryingly sexual!
So 12am comes round and i´ve had no sleep and have developed a pounding headache at the front of my forehead. So anyway i get up, attempt to get dressed and head downstairs. I make it down stairs, swaying a touch and a little out of sorts but i guess maybe it's a bit of tiredness and dehydration. My guide realised quite quickly that i'm struggling, after i have to ask him to do up my laces and my garters. But we head outside hoping the outside air may help, it does a bit and we start making our
way. I feel it's important to give it a go, seeing as this is probably the only time in my life i will be half way up Cotapaxi.
Anyway after about 50 meters climb it is pretty clear that this is not going to happen for me.
I'm not sure if anyone else has had Altitude sickness but for the unknowing i'll explain.
It's like there is a plastic covering over your brain which means that nothing seems to make sense.
I'll give you two examples:
We're walking along a ridge on snow and i'm slipping around a bit (it's not a huge ridge or anything just a ridge). Rather that using my icepick as a stick, i am just swinging it aimlessly around. Completely obvious to the concept that a stick can support my weight.
Ontop of this. It's pretty cold. I'm pretty cold but rather than putting my scarf on i feel that the sensible place to put a scarf is in fact in my rucksack on my bag.
While this stupidity is going on the front of my head is bulging, i feel nauseous, i'm dizzy, and i can't speak clearly in
engilsh let alone Spanish!
So on explaining this, my guide tells me that basically we are at the point where i can still make it back by myself and if we continue it's going to be all three of us heading back. Despite the plastic brain i figure that heading back is the best option and i head for the refuge! Back in the refuge i feel a bit better but my head still aches and i takes me an hour or so of deep breathing exercises for the pounding pain to stop.
At this point Cornelious returns, explaining that all the groups have had to turn back because at about 5,400 it became clear that none of the snow had settled and a wrong step could cause a huge avalanche!
So after a couple of hours of sleep we drive home, spotting the ususal oddeties that you see on Ecuadorian roads and then in the evening we get reading to head off to the jungle for spanish and treking in the Amazon!
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Simon
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Wrong Title
This was originally going to be both but it turned out that maybe the amazon deserved it's own section, so i apologies for the misleading title!