Mountains

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Sorry for not having written any new entry for quite a while now. I was pretty busy with Spanish and Salsa lessons and a lot of other things. So I'll try to update you all now on a number of topics.
At least I have started climbing some mountains now: Sincholagua (4893 m) and Pichincha (4794 m), although not nearly as many as I would have liked to have done by this time.

The first one, Sincholagua I did together with a local climbing group, 'Rumbo al Chimborazo'. We started the day before with a climbing training in the 'Rocodromo'. We did some climbing, abseiling and prusik techniques. The safety standards didn't seem to be quite the same as in Europe, though....

The next day we left Quito at 4 am, and started the trek at 6 am at 3350 m. The speed with which the group climbed up the 1500 m at this altitude was quite phenomenal. I was hardly able to follow, and, together with a Russian woman, Elena, always lagging behind. The leader, Jaime, though, always pushed us to move on (Vamos! Vamos!), not sure why there was such a rush, really. At this altitude my heart was beating rapidly, and my lungs were harldy able to take in enough air. The local remedy is panela (some kind of cane sugar), and it did seem to work somewhat.

By around 1 pm we were at the base of the rock, and Jaime and Christian fixed to ropes. We had to climb up one by one, which with 16 people took quite some time. The rock was quite crumbly and lots of times pretty big junks of rocks were falling down us. Somewhat dangerous without helmets. Anyway, all made it up to the top. The view wasn't too great though, as it was quite foggy.

On the way down Jaime lost his way, and we had to climb up quite a lot again. I was already very exhausted at that time, and it was difficult for me to follow. I addition, it got dark then and so we were stumbling around without quite knowing where we were going. Fortunately most of us had linternas (headlights). After a while we saw far away two lights, and they turned out to be the ones of the bus which was going to pick us up. At 7 pm we reached the bus and after we had pushed it out of the mud in which it was stuck, we were ready to go back to Quito. 13 hours, tough day.

Pichincha was a lot easier. I did that by myself. I went up to Cruz Loma (4100m) by the Teleferico, the only modern cable car in Ecuador. From there it was about 3 hours to the summit, with some climbing on the last few meters. The view on the top was spectacular. I felt like singing 'Ueber den Wolken', as there were clouds all beneath me, but it was just sunny where I was standing. I even saw Cotopaxi. I was the only one up there, as it was quite late in the day already (the morning had been rainy so I went up only in the late afternoon). I was not worried though, as I had my linterna with me. So I walked down happily, initially jumping down through a sandslope which was a lot of fun. Then it got gradually dark, and with lightening in the background the atmosphere was amazing. Suddenly though a group of weird looking figures with some strange lighted symbols on there fronts walked towads me. Miedo (fear) krept up on me, and all kinds of toughts came into my mind: some kind of guerrileros? Ladrones (Robbers)? Then the front man spoke to me: they were a police group who are patrolling Pichincha every night to check out for lost people. Somebody who had seen me had told them that I was still up on the mountain, and they were worried about me. The symbol on their front were just reflectors. So I walked down with them and was the last one to take the Teleferico down. They had kept it open especially for me.....

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