Cotopaxi

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Hola!

So after a very full two days adventuring in the cloudforest, Saturday morning 8 of us headed off to Cotopaxi for the weekend. Cotopaxi is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and is the second highest point in Ecuador. It has a huge snowcap on the top and is very beautiful. We took another travel bus to Cotopaxi national park, which was about 3 hours away from Quito. This trip was more camping intense, we packed our packs with food, sleep bags, food, and ropes to repel off the cave we would be sleeping in.

We got dropped off in the middle of the park and began our 3 hour walk to our “camping site” AKA a cave with straw to sleep on. The director of international students at Universidad de San Francisco has camped in this cave numerous times and he volunteered to take us there. So we had 8 chicas and the director, a really fun group. The walk to the cave was a little more difficult than we expected because of the toll the altitude takes on you. It gets a lot harder to breath and I had a little bit of a headache. But the beauty of the place overpowered all the negative, don’t worry. When we go to our cave we stood around and talked having a good time and then decided to gather some firewood. Unfortunately the fire wood was too damp to light a fire, which was a bummer because the temperature did drop to freezing at night but it was all good. We had a small campers burner to make tea and rice and lentils for dinner so we were nice and warm inside. Our director had some mad scary ghost stories, which were really entertaining (and frightening). So we fell asleep with some terrifying ghost pictures in our heads and slept to the sound of the rain. In the morning we hiked further up the mountain we were staying on and the director set up some ropes and taught us how to repel down the side of a mountain. It was definitely scary at first because your grip is the only think keeping you from free falling. I had to put a lot of trust into my right hand not to get scared and let go of the break. However, it all worked out and it was exhilarating. I could definitely make that a new hobby of mine. After repelling we packed up and headed back to meet our bus. We basically had to run with our packs up and down steep hills because we were late for the bus. It was exhausting and I got my work out in, but we made it and drove back to Quito. Sunday night when I got back I had to immediately start washing my clothes and pack to go the Amazon jungle the next day! Busy, busy, busy.

Next time on Danielle’s blog: The Amazon.
Until then, much love!

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Photos

Bones
We ran into many skeletons on our walks of horse and cows that roam the land. This one was a horse.

Flowers
There are basically just pretty flowers anywhere you go in ecuador.

Like I said...
Pretty flowers.

Cotopaxi
The very tip was peeking out...

Wild Horses
Soooo beautiful.

Home Sweet Cave
The cave we slept in.

View
This was under the cave as well. Water constantly dripped down in to this pool of water, nice and soothing.

Condor!
We were extremely lucky to see this bird. There are only about 70 of them in Ecuador. They are the largest bird with a wing span of about 11 ft. They are what clean all the bones we saw.

More Cotopaxi
A little more was showing...

Preparing to Repel
The beginning was the scariest.

Repelling
This isn't me, but I did that too. This is the top of our cave.

There She Is!
Finally emerged from the clouds hiking back to the bus.

Cotopaxi and the Lake
The view was amazing everywhere you looked basically.