The Quilitoa Loop

Whoever would have thought travelling in the back of a pickup truck would be so much fun!

Next up was the Quilitoa Loop - an unpaved road about 100km long starting and ending in the town of Latacunga.  The road winds its way through some beautiful countryside, passing several small villages, with the main sight being the spectacular crater lake at Quilotoa.

We got to Latacunga and headed straight to the tiny village of Zumbahua, famous for it's Saturday markets.  The market was crazy - I have never seen so many people crammed into one space.

There were food stalls, hat stalls, dress stalls, blanket stalls, people repairing clothes on the street - everything you can imagine was being sold.  Even this stylish piece of headwear.

There were also stalls selling chicken meals - each one had a pile of chickens on the floor next to it.  At one point, I went to step over a pile and they started moving!

This area is very remote - there are two buses a day (if the driver can be bothered) - so the best option is to hitch hike from place to place.  We got a lift over to Quilotoa, crammed into the back of an old man's truck, with Chilean & Argentinian backpackers, and an Ecuadorian family.  It was a bit of a squash...  We jumped out at the rim of the crater and ran over to see what the lake was like.  I already had high hopes but I was absolutely lost for words when I saw the lake.  It is the most beautiful lake I have ever seen.  The water shimmers an emerald green and the insides of the crater plunge dramatically into the water.

We hiked around for most of the day and went down to the water.  After returning to the top, and demolishing some chiken on a stick that a woman was selling on the side of the road, we tried to hitch hike to the next town, Chugchilan.

Hitch hiking is quite easy in Ecuador, but the driver usually expects you to pay something for petrol.  The road to Chugchilan, although only 24km, is in very bad condition.  It winds through the mountains and has given way in some points.  For this reason no one goes that way and anyone who agreed to take us wanted $25.  No chance.  We therefore headed to the road and waited for the bus, which we were told "may or may not be coming through the town in two hours".  After waiting for 15 minutes playing Schere Stein Papier (rock paper scissors in German - yes, we were that bored), we struck gold.  The park ranger agreed to take us in the back of his pickup - for free!

The road was so dusty that by the time we arrived in Chugchilan we were completely covered, but the ride was so much fun that no one cared.  We found a room in some one's house but weren't allowed to enter until we had been dusted down by the woman who owned it! Chugchilan is a tiny village with about 200 people set next to a huge green canyon in the countryside.

We spent the next day walking around the countryside and then waiting until midday for the 10am bus.  The time was passed eating ice cream and talking to a crazy old man wearing an Invincibles cap.

The bus finally came.  The next destination was Saqsili, home to an apparently amazing indigenous market.  You probably noticed I said 'apparently' - it was Sunday, the only day of the week that the market didn't happen!  We ate some cakes, walked to the town square (which was under construction) and hopped on a bus back to Latacunga.  What an awesome three days!

It was time to say goodbye to Vitus as he was heading off to the coast.  We said our farewells, promised to stay in touch and I joined the back of a very long queue to get on a bus to Quito....

The centre of the town square in Zumbahua.

Just about to head down to the water.

The lake is surrounded by nice plants.

Ridiculous emerald waters...it's colder than it looks though!

Beautiful countryside around Chugchilan.

OK, another lake picture!

Chilling out in Baños

I should have known, when I read the tagline on this bus, that there would be problems....

Myself and Vitus (the German guy I climbed Chimborazo with), were heading from Riobamba to the beautiful green town of Baños.  We were departed an hour late and had a minor crash into the back of a truck - our driver had lost control while eating a piece of cake.  Sangarsli Buses really are the "Besth of the Besth".

All you bright people with a bit of Spanish knowledge will know that Baños usually means toilets.  However, in this case it means baths, a reference to the hot springs in the area.  The town is perched on edge of a huge gorge, carved over centuries by the Pastaza river, and is surrounded by lush, green mountains.  Just to add to the scenery, the active volcano Tungurahua splutters away on the horizon, spitting out black smoke on an hourly basis.

We were still in pain from the Chimborazo climb so top of the list was a soak in the hot springs.  It wasn't exactly the authentic experience we were expecting - they channel the water into a small swimming pool which is packed by Ecuadorian pensioners - but it felt so good on the aching legs that we couldn't care less!

The next day we went on a ride to see some of the waterfalls in the region.  There are hundreds.  After entering the bus, a guy jumped on and hung a huge speaker at the back.  We assumed that they would give some commentary along the way...but this is South America - of course they just pumped lots of tunes all the way, it was like being in a moving disco!

The waterfalls were great and the trip culminated in walking right up to a huge waterfall in the jungle.  I decided to stand next to it which was a bad idea - there was so much water being thrown around I was soaked through after 15 seconds!

We also took the dodgiest cable car across the gorge and back.  The fact that the person controlling it was drinking a beer didn't phase me too much, it was the fact that the cable looked like it was about 600 years old that was slightly worrying....

Other than that, we just wandered around the town eating Melcocha, a bit like a stick of rock if you're British, or taffy (whatever that is).  We headed off to catch the bus to Latacunga, stopping for some juice and bread at Super Bar Mario Bross bakery.  Copyright is optional in South America.

I'll leave you with some graffiti and another twin waterfall...

Cuenca and Montañita

This post is a bit out of order!  I visited Cuenca and Montañita before climbing Chimborazo, about 10 days ago.  But, due to some camera malfunctions, I'm writing about it now.

Cuenca is a beautiful colonial town in the South of Ecuador with a crystal clear river flowing through the centre.  There are spectacular buildings on every street and, although I'm not exactly an architecture fan, it is an enchanting place to lose yourself for a day.

I stayed in an awesome hostel, which just happened to have no people in it.  For the whole time I stayed there.  I therefore spent the evenings drinking beer with the owners, telling them where I'd been, and trying to use the past tense in a non-comical way.  I visited the Museo de la Cultura, which was awesome.  I don't normally get particularly into museums but this one was a kinda hodgepodge of several different museums - old coins, modern art, the biggest stamp collection I've ever seen and an exhibition on the shrunken heads of the Shuar people.

Interesting things worth mentioning about the coins and stamps - they had two Penny Black stamps (the first ever stamp) and, looking at the Ecuadorian coins throughout the years, you could see when the Ecuadorian Sucre crashed.  Over a period of 4 years the biggest banknote went from 1,000 Sucres to 50,000.  For this reason they now use the US Dollar as their national currency (my least favourite currency of all currencies).

The shrunken heads were really interesting!  The Shuar people, a tribe that lives in the amazon, would perform this ritual on captured enemies.  When an enemy was captured, their head would be cut off (dead or alive), before the warrior retreated back to camp with it.  The skin would be cut open and the skull would be removed.  The victim's eyes would then be sewn shut and the lips were skewered together.  The head is then boiled, reducing it's size, before being filled with hot stones which reduced the size further.  In the end the head is about 1/3rd it's original size.  Creepy.

Next stop was Montañita.  On first glance, it's a sleepy little beach village with some good surf, but it's actually a big party place.  I won't lie, all I did was surf in the day and drink beer in the night.  The only other thing worth mentioning is that, after staying in probably over 100 hostel beds, I had my first bedbug experience.  It was not nice and I still have the bites a week later.  Luckily, I only slept in that bed one night - all other sleeps were taken on the beach.

So, that was the week that preceded climbing Chimborazo.  Just arrived in Baños a town surrounded by green hills and a very active volcano...

The huge church in the beautiful main square of Cuenca.

Cuenca's motto - I think they stole this from Thompson holidays.

Cuenca also has some awesome graffiti.

Another nice church - there are lots of these!

More cool graffiti - I dunno what they were smoking when they came up with this...

A cool sculpture - I wanted to climb this pole too but was worried it would fall over.

The bed with bedbugs! I got what I deserved as I booked the cheapest - in a loft with no walls.

The furthest point from the centre of the Earth

I haven't slept for about 36 hours, I'm aching all over, and climbing stairs is a big challenge at the moment.

I have just spent the last two days climbing Volcan Chimborazo - the highest mountain in Ecuador at 6,310m.  Furthermore, the summit, due to the Equatorial bulge, is the farthest point from the centre of the Earth - take that Everest climbers!

This post is a bit out of order - I've already visited Cuenca and Montañita - but I foolishly managed to delete the pictures from my camera!  Luckily I backed them up so will write about Cuenca/Montañita next time.

I arrived in Riobamba and managed to find a German guy (Vitus) and Austrian guy (Christian) who were keen to try for the summit.  The next day we found a guide, rented some gear and headed off to Chimborazo national park.  The morning was spent hiking to the refugio at 5,000m.

Acclimatisation is key for these kinds of ascents - ideally you'd be acclimatised to 5,500m+.  We'd all been at high altitude in Bolivia and Peru but everyone had to admit that they had been at sea level for the last three or four days.  Actually for me it had been more like eight days, and three of those had been largely spent drinking in Montañita.  I didn't mention it.

We all felt great walking up to 5,000m and kipped down at about 6pm, aiming to start hiking at 10pm.  I didn't get a wink of sleep (probably because we went to bed at 6pm), neither did Vitus and Christian got 1.5hrs.  Even so, we set off in good spirits at 10pm and climbed about 300 vertical meters of volcanic ash/rock arriving at the snowline at about 5,300m (pics taken on the way down).

We put on crampons, gaiters, harnesses and roped ourselves together in twos.  We headed straight up an icy glacier for another couple of hundred meters before we hit fresh snow.  By now Vitus, who was roped to me, was starting to feel the altitude.  He had a really bad headache and ran out of energy every ten minutes.  It was now midnight and the temperature had dropped to -8 but we stopped for food and lots of water.  He felt better but still had no energy and it took an hour to climb the next hundred meters to 5,600m.

By this point everyone was knackered.  I don't know if it was the elevation or the fact that I'd had no sleep (probably a combination of the two), but I had absolutely no energy.  Then the snow got deep, so walking through it was an absolute mission - every step felt like treading through treacle - I have never been so exhausted in my life.

At 5,700m even the guide suggested that we go back - the others had bad headaches and all three of us were so slow we might as well have been on our hands and knees.  There was zero chance I was going to turn back, and was prepared to go the rest of the way on my own (it was just straight up from there), but surprisingly the others wanted to carry on too.  We were so slow - every 15 minutes we'd need to stop and then two minutes after getting going we'd be counting down the minutes to the next stop.  After climbing what I thought was another 300 vertical meters, we checked the altimeter and found we'd only done another 100m.  I have never felt like that climbing anything before!

Luckily, time was on our side.  At about 5am we got the first beams of twilight and could see the summit, about 500m up.  This spurred us on and by 6am we only had another 300m to go.  At this point the weather, which had been pretty bad anyway, got really really bad.  It was so windy that I got blown over at one point and it was blizzard conditions.  Even though I was wearing about 137 layers of clothing, I was freezing.  The only upside was that my beard froze and I looked like I was on an expedition to the North Pole.  We had come so far by then that we carried on to the top.  It was painful.  At the top I saw some snow and ice, took one photo, high-fived everyone and went back over the ridge.

No one had the energy to walk down so we pulled down our waterproof jackets and slid down on our asses.  Best decision I'd made all day.  There was still the descent down the rocky part but we made it in the end.  By the time we got back to the refugio we probably would have qualified for wheelchair assistance at most international airports.

As you can tell from the account above, it was not the easiest, most relaxing or beautiful of hikes.  But it was a great challenge to have conquered and we all got back to Riobamba with big, if tired, smiles on our faces!