Cotopaxi

Waiting at the new Quito airport for our next adventure, I still can't believe our day yesterday. We were up before 6am, aka, crack of dawn for us! Hurried out the door to catch a cab for our volcano tour. We arrived at the meeting place and were escorted to a random hostel where we were told to sit down for desayuno, breakfast. Ok, I'd have been happy to sleep another hour, but I guess overdone scrambled eggs were on our agenda for the day. Reyn didn't want to eat, but, I told him he'd be sorry if he didn't because we needed the energy for the day... Open mouth insert foot, read on.

We jumped into a land rover with bikes in the roof, joining Patrick, a sweet, quiet young man from St. Louis. Our guide was Marco.....local private guide and mountain climber. We drove through early morning Quito traffic to the south through the Avenue of Volcanos with Marco sharing a wealth of knowledge about the local area and Ecuador in general. About 45 minutes into the drive Reyn was white faced and panicked. I tried to figure out what was happening when he yelled, "I'm gonna barf!" ....Señor, Por favor, ayudame, mi hijo is infermidad. El (insert vomitting motions.) So much for forcing down those eggs!

Once he expunged his stomach contents, he was happy and we were good to go. The drive down was beautiful. We drove by 6-7 volcanos, all majestic. We passed a hill and Cotopaxi was there in all her glory! Wow, mere mortals can not describe the majesty of this monster. The boys commented that it didn't look real, rather as if someone Photoshopped it into the landscape. It just didn't fit with the landscape with its gigantic size and glacier covered top.

Ecuador considers Cotopaxi to be one of her national treasures and have made the surrounding area a national park. We entered the park and started our drive ascending to the parking lot from which people trek to the refuge or the peak. Along the drive we saw the vegetation and general topography radically change. We stopped a few times for photos and to view the wild horses. Marco started yelling about our good luck while pointing at the sky...a condor! This was a rare sighting, the landscape becoming more lunar like, wild horses, Cotopaxi as a backdrop and a condor. Someone pinch me!

We made it to the parking lot and Marco barked at us to keep the doors closed...ok, whatever. Then he explained the general rules, what to expect, what was expected of us, ok already, whatever. We opened the doors and the boys almost blew off the precipice it was so cold and windy. We couldn't even hear each other when yelling within feet of one another. Less than 5 minutes ago we were out taking photos in starkly different conditions!

Ill continue sharing about our volcano adventures in the next post, but need to note that no photos I have ever seen of Cotopaxi and the surrounding area do it any justice, including mine!