High Altitude Adventures

My tour has certainly lived up to its description so far. It said it was "active", and active it has been! In true South American style, we began the tour with a bit of excitement when our public bus to Cotopaxi was stopped and searched by about 12 armed policemen. Apparently they'd recieved information that there might have been an armed and dangerous man on our bus. Fortunately, it seemed to be incorrect and we were allowed to continue. The Canadians and yanks in the group were a little perturbed!

First up was two days of mountain biking. Having never actually been mountain biking before, this was a pretty extreme introduction! Day one began at the car park of the refuge from which we had begun our climb attempt a few weeks before. Only this time we were going DOWN the mountain side, and it's bloody steep! My fear of heights, and sharp rocky/sandy corners at high speed, returned and I soon got sore hands from over-using my breaks! But having effectively been training at altitude for about a month meant that I easily overtook the others on the uphills. The next day we took a route in the province of Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador at over 6000m. The tracks were even steeper, rockier and narrower - my hands were in agony! I was glad of the oxygen-sapping uphills to give my hands a break! It was great fun though. Our mountain biking guide, Edison, was a really interesting guy too. Also a vegetarian, I walmed to him instantly! With his athletic physique, long flowing dark hair and beautifully intense eyes, he could have walked right out of a movie about the Amazon - or the native American Indians, I'm not sure which - as the wise and benevolent indigenous hero. Wish we could have had more than 2 days with him!

In comparison to the almost jurassic scenery of the Cotopaxi National Park, the countryside in Chimborazo is just beautiful - rolling hills covered in a patchwork of fields, small woods, and babbling streams, with sheep, cattle and horses everywhere. Chimborazo has the highest percentage of indigenous people, and along every road we cycled we passed classic examples of the people of the Andes. I hadn't really believed that people really still dressed in bright green thick pleated skirts, thick blue stockings, purple ponchos and black pudding-shaped hats, but they really do. And how cute the little girls look in their miniature versions! They looked as they do in the postcards, with their pleated dark hair and red-flushed cheeks, often struggling up a hillside carrying a bale of guinea-pig feed.

Some of the group, having flown into Quito only a day or 2 earlier, really struggled with the altitude. Adrian, a Canadian in his mid-30s, had it the worst, despite seeming the most prepared one could possibly be for this trip. He'd been using altitude sickness medicine (as well as a special water filter, a padded saddle, padded cycling shorts, technical sports wear, a saddle bag...) yet even now, a week later, is still struggling to regain his appetite. But he's shown incredible determination (or maybe, given his diminuitive stature, the symptoms of short-man syndrome?) not to let it stop him from proving how strong and fit he is, and has insisted on fighting his way to the front of the group during the biking and hiking. Definitely a competitor! Most of the others have had a few headaches and coughs, as well as general fatigue, but are doing ok now.

In Chimborazo we stayed in a lower refuge of the Chimborazo volcano, the station house of a now barely used railway line built in the early 1900s by an Englishman. It's an amazing place, a little traditionally-decorated haven of coziness in a cold and bleak environment. Through the windows you just can't miss the snow-capped peak of the volcano, dominating the horizon. Yet inside the log fires and soft lighting make the retreat feel very homely. Outside, I got my first sighting of llamas and alpacas, loosesly tied up like sheep to graze in the grass in the station grounds. So cool! The station is run by the most amazing guy I think I've ever met. Rodrigo is about 50, and has only one and a half lungs after a football accident, but has more fitness, energy and dynamism than any 20-year old I've ever met. He never sits down for more than a minute, and every day goes hiking (if not running) in the mountains. He often climbs Chimborazo more than 2 times a week, ran a marathon a few months ago, and is hoping to go to the Himalayas in the summer. He knows everything there is to know about his local area, and about all of Ecuador for that matter, and has the most fascinating stories - of finding the remains of a passenger plane that had crashed in the glacier of the volcano 23 years earlier, of losing tourists to the various mountains of South America, of an expedition of Belgian doctors conducting a trial of Viagra at altitude... Just an incredible guy.

He was our guide for a little hike up to the glaciers of Chimborazo (I say little, but it proved too much for Adrian, despite his best efforts), as well as for our 3-day trek along the Inca trail to a site of Inca ruins called Ingapirca. It's Ecuador's answer to the Inca trail in Peru and Macchu Pichu. But the best thing about this trek was that we had it entirely to ourselves, with the exception of a smattering of indigenous people and their donkeys we passed along the way. The scenery was just incredible. In fact the road to the starting point was enough to give us all white knuckles. It traversed, with the sharpest of corners, the steepest of mountainsides, affording views not altogether welcome of a deep green pasture-covered valley beneath. It really was spectacular. Our hiking territory was as beautiful. We often followed the path of a river, crossing over stones and waterfalls, bridges and passes. We saw butterflies, hummingbirds, falcons and an incredible array of wild flowers and orchids - all of which Rodrigo could name and describe, naturally. I got to practise my Spanish with the guides a little too. It was hard going at times, but easy by Cotopaxi standards. Not for the unaccalimatised, though, some of whom found it very tough. It was well worth it though, and the Inca site at the end of our long trek was really interesting. The camping was less fun. Although, with the strong ecuatorial sun, the days were warm despite the altitude, the nights were definitely not. Even with 2 sleeping bags, and three girls to one tent, I was too cold to get more than a few minutes sleep at a time in either of the two nights. Plus, despite the remoteness of our camps, whether for the chattering of our little pack of donkeys or from the howling wind, it was anything but quiet. It's amazing what they can rustle up for dinner without a kitchen though; the soups were perfect, especially when chilled to the bone!

I'm now in Baños, a charming town nestled in the mountains a little closer to the Amazon bason. We're at about 1,800m here, so breathing is a lot easier! The stairs up to my (unbelievably luxurious... at least by camping standards) hotel room are a doddle, even with my great big backpack! I really want to try and run a marathon or something now, because after all this exercise at 4000m plus, I must be super-fit at sea level! Sadly, it's raining here, but I think that's typical of the cloud forest. Still, it doesn't really matter for the most common leisure activities here - visiting the hot spring baths! Sunday, it seems, is the day when half of Ecuador descends on the hot spring baths of Baños, so at our guide Carlos's recommendation, we went to the thermal spa instead. For $3, I was treated to a bizarre "therapeutic" process. I was shut in a little box of hot steam infused with a sprig of Eucalyptus(with only my head out of the box) for 20 minutes or so, released briefly to be doused with freezing cold water, only to be returned to the steamy inferno for another session. This was repeated for an hour or so, before I was hosed down with more freezing cold water. The guy in charge of the cold water seemed to take great pleasure in making the women scream! After all that sweating, I was pretty dehydrated afterwards, but I felt so relaxed I just wanted a siesta, so it must have worked!

We've got until tomorrow afternoon in Baños. Maybe the hot springs will be less busy tomorrow morning. Though, glutton for punishment, I kind of want to go hiking tomorrow. I also need to replace that jumper I lost last Tuesday night... Tomorrow afternoon, we leave for Tena, a jungle town where we begin our 3 days of rafting on Tuesday morning. It's going to be a pretty sharp contrast to move from the cold, bleak, oxygen deprived heights of 4,000m to the stifling humidity and dense vegetation of the Amazon at less than 1,000m. Not really relishing the prospect of all those mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies...!

Tonight, we're finally getting a night out. We'll be a strange group. There's: Peter, the retired English chemistry professor who studied at Cambridge but has lived most of his life in Canada; Neville, the crazy socialist grandfather from Colorado; 6-feet tall Lisa, a 42 year old boy-scout from Toronto; Tamara, a lovely athletic 29-year old German Swiss; 33 year old Yanna from Denmark (yep, another Dane) who works on a Scandinavian cruise ship; Adrian, the small Canadian dude; and Ki (33, car insurance) and Kati (25, medical student), avid mountain-bikers from Germany on their pre-wedding honeymoon since they can't take the time off after their wedding in May. Add some beer, or 80% proof local sugar cane liquor, and it should be an interesting night...