We ate a good breakfast and set out apprehensively in to the gale force wind at the crater edge.
At the start of the hike there is an information board giving some helpful information on the hike, what it didn't say was some local guides had sabotaged the hike markers in order for people to need guides and not walk alone! brilliant.
We had discussed with people the correct way to go but had come to the decision we would try to follow the markers.
The walk started beautifully with us wandering alone through the valley without a care in the world.
When we asked the house owner for directions to the main path he advised for the fee of $25 he would guide us. In broken Spanish we advised we only wanted directions however he was not going to budge.
So Sarah put on her negotiating hat and started with an offer of $5, the guide said $15 and Sarah said......$5 the guide said $10 and Sarah said......$5 the guide said ok.
I like to think its facts like these that led Ernst and Young adding Sarah to the Mergers and Acquisitions team!
So our trusty guide "Olande" saddled up his horse and led the way, he kindly offered me to ride the horse however I had to decline.
Along the way we were met by two young boys who could only have been 4 or 5 years old, who were out in the mountains herding their sheep. Children in England can't dress themselves at this age???? Let alone their parents asking them to go and move the sheep!
I offered the boys some almonds and walnuts which they took without hesitation, Olande had a sad look on his face so I offered him some too, which he gladly accepted with a huge grin.
After an hour or so we arrived at the main path, Olande announced that we could make it from here alone. We gave him some biscuits and a lolly as a tip and as quickly as he had joined our little adventure he jumped on his horse and disappeared.
We now walked for about an hour down a road enjoying the views ahead of us of the sprawling Andees.
The next village we reached was Guayama, there was little more here than a school a few house sand a closed shop.
Below is evidence of Indiana Jones style bridge crossings.
We had to navigate a very large valley but once done we had a view back to where we had started.
 |
| Start point the far right spike, you can also see the valley we crossed The walk took us about 4 1/2 hours. The village of Chugchilan is very small it only has around 100 people who live there, but as with all South American villages they still have a church. |
We had read in the Lonely Planet guide book for Ecuador that there was a Cheese factory near the town so with two Americans we met at our hostel we ventured out in search of the cheese factory. It turned out that the Cheese factory was actually a three hour car ride away....end of that plan.
We wondered around Chugchilan for a a bit, that takes around 4 minutes. Until we heard some drums beating...We followed the sound until it led to the village school...intrigued we tried to look over the fence a small boy told us to go in.
We were met with a group of school children practising for a parade they were in the next day, they paraded around the school playground for 2 hours practising
Dinner at the hostel was good and the temperature much warmer, we were still at 3500 meters but it seemed far more sedate.
We headed back to Latacunga the next morning to try to organise our Cotopaxi summit attempt....
Once back in Latacunga we stumbled across two French guys we met in Quilotoa who were heading to Cotopaxi that day they had not gone due to bad weather which seems to still be causing issues.
So the summit attempt is awaiting weather improvement, I'm crossing everything it happens....
Unfortunately in amongst all this I missed Hamilton winning the German GP, I bet that upset Vettel :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment