Ecuador Climbing Cotopaxi and Jungle tour!

Voila Mardi 11 Sept Monica et moi nous separons d'Alex et SaoMai pour repousser nos limites! Nous avions pris la folle decision de nous lancer a l'ascension du deuxieme volcan le plus haut d'Equateur le Cotopaxi culminant a 5800 metres d'altitude! Meanwhile Alex and SaoMai would go on a circuit around another volcanoe the Quilotoa.

So Monica and I arrived at the cotopaxi national park at 11h30 after two hours of bumpy bus! There, in the middle of nowhere we were suppose to meet our guide! After waiting for him for more than an hour he finally showed up, a rustic ecuatorian man obvioulsy from the countryside surrounding the his 5th decades. We tried the material he had brought not being surprised that half of it was not the right size...Well it was not his falt but the agency and we would have to deal with it, because there was no time for making problems if we wanted to climb, according to him. We could still come to a solution which consisted of the second group coming tomorrow to bring the missing material. We thereafter, continued further in the park to reach our campsite for the night. Indeed, we had thought of doing the climbing in three days which included one day of acclimatation sleeping in tents the first night at 3800m. At this altitude the landscape are fabulous, looking alike impressive scenery of a adventure movie! To enjoy it a little more we went on a warm up tour around a lake, nestled on a plateau surrounded by volcanoes one of them being the Cotopaxi! Back to the camp our guide Rafa had prepared our copious diner! We went to sleep in our Quechua tent, sleeping with as many layers of cloth as we had in our sleeping bag and one next to each other! Even like this we were cold but it was funny! Next morning we woke up at 8:00 and enjoyed a huge breakfast prepared by Rafa! Later on we prepared our bags for refuge and the climbing of the volcanoe. We started to walk till the refuge parking while Rafa went to look for the other three crazy climbers and their guide. We all arrived at 2:00pm at the refuge at 4800 after walking 1 hour on the plateau, driving one hour up to the refuge parking space and walking uphill another 40minutes. There we had a good meal and went to try our material (boots, crampons, piolets etcs) on the glacier. By 6pm we were back and ready to sleep. Already at this stage one of our colleage was completly sick because of the altitude and had unfortunatly already abandonned.

After a short sleep disturbed by our friend throwing up all what he could, a strong wind, and a freezing temperature we woke up at around midnight for starting to climb! At this point our sick friend wife was sick as well and we were now only three for two guides plus two other spanish coming with another guide from another agency. We equiped ourselves, ate something, turned on our front light and went out in the night with the strong wind to seek our limits! After a few hours walking all together, we decided to make different groups. Monica would continue with Rafa alone. A German guy and I would go on with Jorge the second guide (looking a lot more like the kind of professional mountain guide I had seen before being more sympatic as well). Unfortunatly it did not go as Jorge and I thought it would, the german young man was being affected a lot more by altitude and was completly dead whereas I, surprising myself, would feel in all my stake!

However, he bravely continued even though at a very slow rythm, which of course was reasonable and better than nothing.

We passed, the spanish who had broken their crampons and were forced to resign. after 7hours of harsh walk in the snow, affronting the wind and the-9C temperature we arrived at 5500m by sunrise! It was for sure the most precious sunrise I had ever seen in my entire life!

At 7:00Am we started to go down a lot more relaxed and taking some nice precious pictures!