Gettin´ high

On Monday, we got higher than ever before. And I mean really, really high. We hiked up the hikable portion of Cotopaxi (wikipedia says: Cotopaxi is a stratovolcano in the Andes Mountains, located about 28 km (17 mi) south of Quito, Ecuador, South America.[4] It is the second highest summit in the country, reaching a height of 5,897 m (19,347 ft)). We reached where the glacier starts, which is at 5,000 m, or 16,400 feet. From there, if you want to continue, you have to go at 2am when the ice is more frozen and you have less of a chance of falling into a crevasse. You also need crampons and ice axes. Eh... next time, Cotopaxi, next time. (I must say, I am tired of getting almost to the top of things.)

But often, the journey is more interesting than the destination, and although the destination was pretty beautiful, the story is more interestng for the journey in this case.

After several hours on a bus from northern Quito, the bus dropped us off on the side of the road and pointed to a little station: our next step for getting to Cotopaxi. From the rural area with a little hut and several pick-up trucks, we asked ourselves "shouldn´t we be able to see the mountain?" Thankfully, we weren´t actually deceived, and the mountain was just obscured by clouds.

We asked the man running the station how much it costs to go the last leg of the trip to Cotopaxi. He tells us $30 per person for the roundtrip car ride. Then we´d have to pa $10 each for national park entrance, and also we would have to pay a guide to take us. Ok, we immediately called him out on his bullshit, especially because it was onluy 35km more by car. We waited around, decididing what to do. The man smirked at us, probably knowing we didn´t have other options.

Tangent: we decided that we are not from the United States because we don´t like being charged 5 times more than necessary for everything. But since Justine doesn´t speak Romanian, we decided to be from South Africa. And so, we spent the next few minutes trying to remember everything we could about Sasha´s mom.

When the man who tried to rip us off finally asked us where we were from, he immediately lit up when we said South Africa (remember: World Cup was in South Africa. We´re in Latin America. Latin America is crazy about the World Cup). I think he would´ve agreed to take us to Cotopaxi for a lower price. Thankfully, just when we were about to try to negotiate with him to take us there for $10 each, a truck full of respectable looking young men drove through and they agreed to let us sit in the back of their truck, mostly because they were so delighted to have two South African gringitas gracing their travels. We bumped and rattled our way through the next 35km.

Along the way (7km into the drive) we had to go through the park entrance, where nationals pay $2 and foreigners pay $10. Okay, whatever, we´ll pay $10, it´s a national park. But when I went to pay our fee, the people at the park entrance said that foreigners are not allowed in without a guide, and that we would need to hire a guide. He said it´s a law in the Ecuadorian constitution that foreigners can´t come in without a guide because they´ll get lost, and then their home countries will get mad at Ecuador for letting them get lost. I didn´t bother asking how much guides cost, but set about: 1. arguing with him, saying that if it´s a rule, then it should be posted somewhere, that he´s making it up just to rip us off, and that if he can´t produce a written copy of the constitution saying just that, I have no reason to believe him. Then, 2. Pleading with him, saying we´d come all the way from South Africa, and we really just wanted to go up Cotopaxi but we didn´t have enough money with us to pay for a guide, and please please please, all the way from South Africa. Finally, he agreed that the Ecuadorian men who were driving us (he did not realize that all but one of them were actually Columbian) could be our "guides". He took the real Ecuadorian´s driver´s license and informed him that he couldn´t get it back unless he produced two safe gringitas exiting the park at the end of the day. Then he asked, "how was the World Cup?" and I winked and said "fantastic."

Thank you to Sasha and family, for being South African.

Of course, as soon as we got to the Cotopaxi parking lot, we felt guilty for lying and told our friendly drivers-turned-mountain-guides that we are not actually South African. They were understandably disappointed, but we are still gringitas, even if not South African, so they did not turn against us.

Because the guy wouldn´t get his driver license back if they didn´t keep us intact, they informed us we couldn´t leave their sight. Together, the five of us (would have been six, but one stayed in the car because of an injured leg) navigated the thin atmosphere, huffing and puffing our way up the final 700 meters to where the glaciar starts. I raced one of them and won.

[Someday soon, I will upload photos, but it doesn´t seem to connect onto this computer. Also, recommendations for how many megapixels I should be taking my photos at? Is 3 enough?]

We rode back in the truck as the sun was setting, feeling elated/euphoric/ecstatic from exercise, beautiful scenery, and low oxygen.






So... who is coming to Patagonia with me sometime soon to summit tall mountains?




Also: today we head to Baños, where a volcano is currently erupting. Then, to the Devil´s nose, then we head further south back to Perú.


Yours,
Anita