into ecuador-my last new country for the year, as all the other countries i am going to this year i have already been.
spent the first couple of days in quito checking out the old town with neil and fran (ok), the equator (overrated) and eating some good tucker with andy and some of the boys he met crying over the rugby. poor kiwis. we also tried to get some tickets to the ecuador vs venezuala world cup qualifier but were told to come back the next day, and i was off hiking so had to leave andy to get them. he did good.
decided to pay some money and go off for some proper acclimitising and have a look around in cotopaxi national park. did a few hikes ranging from 3800-4637m which were pretty nice and was hanging out with a pommie couple steve and harriet who were good fun.
the mornings were generally sweet, then the clouds came in about 9am and covered up cotopaxi and then about 2pm it pissed down. our guide was aware of this though and had us back just before the rain 2/3 days so not too bad. he did however slightly misplace the trail on our ravine trek and had us bushbashing up a fairly steep slope with only some thankfully strong grass to help. this was fun also though, especially as i was ahead of steve and harriet and thus had the higher ground in our berry wars and they copped a mild hiding.
back to quito for a coupla days before my summit assault on cotopaxis 5897 metres.
went off to the soccer with andy, rich, greg and fiona and our taxi driver was a very funny bloke; cant remember why, but he definetly was at the time. aparts from that it could have been a lot better. we were all really looking forward to it, but the game was crap, ecuador lost 0-1 (i havent had my team win in 3 games in south america now), it bucketed down all game, and some little bastard somehow managed to relieve me of my camera without me having any idea.
so not the best night, but couldve been a lot worse with the camera as i only lost about 100 pics from my acclimitising and the soccer itself; still its bloody annoying and inconvenient.
then it was off to climb cotopaxi ('the neck of the moon') 5897 metres and one of the highest active volcanoes in the world.
climbed up to the refuge at 4800m the first day then did some practice on the glacier before dinner and bed before getting up at midnight for brekky and the ascent.
my guide and i got out in front early and stayed that way mainly because he wasnt really a fan of stopping. was going great guns, only problem was a headache which i tried to help by drinking water but this didnt really work as it was pretty much frozen and gave me an icecream headache on top of my original. despite all this was very confident of summiting until we got about 50m below the summit and my guide informed me that the storm the previous night had dumped a heap of snow up there and as we were traversing a 60 degree slope with a fair cliff not that far below us; it was going to be too dangerous to continue. gutted. the old 'your life is more important than the summit' clause.
tiredness hit me when we turned around, as the adrenalin was keeping me strong before that, but that all left when we started going down and i was pretty rooted by the time we got back down to the refuge.
it was beautiful up there though so i am thankful i got to see that, and also that i know my body can handle being at the atltitude; which is good because it wont be the last time!
got back to quito for a few more days and some polite bagging from everyone, ran into urs - a swiss guy from the panama-colombia boat, helped mel and andy get the truck ready for the tour, and got prepared for being on the move again.
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