IMBABURA- What a Mountain

3:30 a.m. Wake up, still a little bit tired
4:00 a.m. Get served amazing toad in a hole/grilled cheese breakfast by Aaron
4:45 a.m. Leave Cotacachi with 9 people packed into one truck
5:50 a.m. Start hike up gigantic mountain
6:10 a.m to 11:30 a.m. Mixture of many feelings and thoughts such as: I want to die right now. My lungs hate me. Wow those guys can climb mountains really fast.  My Spanish is really improving today. Dear god I hope it doesn't rain and make this more slick than it already is. I'm going to make it to the summit even if it means I can't walk tomorrow. 
Sometime around 11:30 a.m. AAAHHHHHH FINALLY- Give me some of that chocolate
Sometime around 12:30 p.m. Losing elevation really does feel better than gaining elevation
1:30 p.m. Losing elevation no longer feels good. It only hurts my toes.
2:30 p.m. Seriously considering ruining my puffy by using it as something slick on which to slide down the mountain.
3:30 p.m. I have never been so happy to see a car in my life.
6:30 p.m. Back at the condo. Ecstatic. Endorphins finally kicking in. Did that day just really happen?

A couple days ago I decided that on Saturday I would go ahead and do the biggest hike that I have encountered thus far in my 20 years on this planet.  Imbabura's summit sits at over 15,000 and from the place we parked the truck to the top we gained roughly one mile of verticle elevation.  Yeah, it was hard, like real hard.  I would even go so far as to say it was arduous.  Thanks for the vocab word junior year English.  Nonetheless, it was amazing.  Amazing views, amazing people, amazing Spanish conversation both on the way up and at the top.  One of the better parts? I can walk today, without too much difficulty.  Apparently it wasn't actually the relentless climbing that slowed me down, but the lack of oxygen from the ridiculous elevation.  As far as big mountains go, living at sea level for the past two years has done nothing for me. Whatever. I made it up. I'm happy.

Today was a glorious day.  Sunshine all day, which has been rare, and beautiful views of Imbabura towering over Cotacachi.  Now I'm sitting in the tile-floored, concrete-walled condo and blaring the Postal Service through my headphones, bringing back some pretty nostalgic memories of driving over the Fremont Bridge during the rainy nights of Portland, and I feel completely content.  I wanted to sit on top of Imbabura from the minute I saw it during the crazy taxi ride from Quito to Cotacachi, and I did it.  But, as much as I love them, the mountains aren't the main reason I came to Ecuador, so I'm going to move toward my next adventure.  Goldi and Aaron came to climb mountains, and they are going to continue to do so, which means it's time for me to go off on my own.  Come Wednesday I'm throwing myself into this crazy place head first.  I'm going to live in the Indigenous community of La Calera, speak English only when I'm teaching it, and study an entirely new way of living. The grace period is over- no more time for settling in, no more nice condo among all the other gringos, no more turning to Goldi for the translation when I can't understand what someone is saying.  For the next month and a half I'm going to utilize a skill that I have had to build at rapid pace during the last two years, adaptation.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Alright, now for the pictures.  There are a few more than usual.  Click on the photo if you want to see it larger.

The starting point of the hike, above the clouds.

We had to park a bit lower than we wanted when we hit this road block.

Cayambe

Kerry saved my life and my ankle with the extra set of trekking poles.

Cayambe again, the afternoon clouds starting to move in.

Self timer shot from the top.  Our hiking crew minus Aaron who is napping in the background.  The guys behind me all live in the villages around Cotacachi.  They made it up the mountain at least an hour, maybe two before the rest of us.

Angel telling us the legends of the volcanoes around the area from atop Imbabura.

The morning road block turned into this.  They build all these roads by manual labor.  No machines except hand tools.

From the car ride back to Cotacachi

Cotacachi

Those of you who know me somewhat well know that I generally despise going for runs unless I have more energy than I know what to do with or I've landed myself in overanalytical Lanie mode and can't sort anything out in my head otherwise.  Plain and simply, I am not a runner.  So imagine my surprise when I drug my ass out of bed at 5:15 this morning to go for a run with Goldi and our local friend Luis.  I definitly didn't have excess energy to get out because who in their right mind has too much energy at five in the morning, and I'm not feeling like a crazy person, so it would appear as though I just went to run.  Apparently it helps your lungs get in shape for climbing the big mountains, so I guess I'll try it for awhile and see what happens.  I gotta say, if nothing else, I love being up that early, and to be honest the run didn't kill me.  Here it goes.

Everything is starting to fall into place quite nicely here in Cotacachi.  It's looking like I'm going to be sticking around the area for longer than I expected.  Luis, one of the local grocery owners and our morning running buddy, is setting me up with quite the deal.  For a ridiculously low price I am going to be able to live with an Indigenous family in one of the small villages around Cotacachi, learn about growing food and medicinal plants, and teach heart meltingly adorable kids.  Everything I want, all in one place.  I'll give the details when the plans are concrete.

Alright, now for pictures.  No pictures of mountains and such this time, as I've spent the majority of the last week in towns, but by request I've included a me picture.  As always, I hope that you are all doing well in your various locations.  Keep the emails coming- even though I'm in a foreign land I still want to keep up on your lives.

The broken glass that replaces barbed wire on everone's walls

OH MY GOD THIS WAS ONLY $8.50!!!

OK, a nice one for mom and dad. 18 bananas, 6 oranges, 8 passion fruit, 6 apples, 6 kiwi, and a pineapple for $4.50.

There odds continue to grow that I will smuggle a dog back to the US with me when this trip is over.

Fuya Fuya

I spent the day in the clouds.  Literally, I was between 12 and 14 thousand feet completely engulfed by clouds.  We decided that another adventure was in store for Saturday, so we packed up our rain gear and our camping gear and called a cab to head to Lago Mojanda.  Above the lake Fuya Fuya calls to be hiked.  1800 feet in 1.2 miles.  Now that's some elevation gain when your end summit is at 14,000 feet, but damn does it feel good at the top.  Well, it feels good until the hail/ snow mixture hits.  Although we were shooting for the longer hike, taking the saddle to the peak of Mojanda, we used our better judgement against the class 3 scramble in a hailstorm up slippery volcanic rock.  Instead we headed back down the mountain, sliding down some of the steep and muddy chutes, voluntarily or not. 

Next came our first Ecuadorian camping experience.  Oh yeah, as stated previously, it's the rainy season.  Luckily, we positioned our tent on thick enough grass that the water wasn't seeping in through the bottom.  Unluckily, we positioned our tent on thick enough grass that it was impossible to find a position that didn't have some sort of lump digging into some part of the body.  Once it got dark around six, Goldi and Aaron decided that they weren't going to risk the effects of elevation, and popped half a diamox to fight off insomnia.  I held true to my "screw you I can sleep anywhere" attitude and held strong, no sleeping pad and all.  I'll admit, it was somewhat of a restless night, but after about 12 different sleeping positions and 10 sets of generally goofy dreams morning hit, and morning at Lago Mojando is worth a restless evening.  Photos of the outing below.

Fuya Fuya

Lago Mojanda with Cerro Negro

Cerro Negro

If I was a mule, I'd want to live here

Laguna Cuicocha

Did I mention that it's the rainy season in Ecuador?  We were thoroughly reminded of this on our first hike around Laguna Cuicocha, a beautiful lake about 15 minutes outside of Cotacachi.  We had thought that the walk  was going to be somewhat of a stroll, perhaps with a few rolling hills here and there.  This was not the case.  Starting at about two, we took a taxi to the lake.  Ivan, our taxi driver, charged us $15 to drive us there, make the four hour hike around the lake, and drive us back to the apartment.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the agreement to accompany us on the hike may have been due to my blonde hair and lack of boyfriend, as he spent about two of the four hours asking me whether I had plans to move to Cotacachi, inquiring as to whether or not I wanted a boyfriend, and probing me for information about what I like in my men.

As wet and freezing the hike was, it was a much needed outdoor excursion, and beautiful nonetheless.  The flat hike that we were planning on turned into quite the trek through the mountains around the lake, but it wouldn't be us if something wasn't straying from the original plans...

Slowly working our way around the lake.

Goldi and Ivan in the back of the truck that took us back to our taxi.

Arrival!

Estoy en Cotacachi, Ecuador.  After a couple life threatening taxi rides I have arrived in the place where I will spend at least the next week and a half or two weeks.  My flight got in on time Monday night, and after about 20 minutes of waiting, and about 20 different taxi offers, Goldi and Aaron arrived to pick me up.  I feel as though I should preface the next few sentences by stating that they hold no element of dramatization.  As we told the taxi driver where we needed to go, he proceeded to drive somewhere around 70 miles an hour down a main street of Quito to the tunes of and American 80´s music mash up that he put in the cd player as soon as we got in the car.  He then proceeded to run 5 or so consecutive red lights, sans a decrease of speed.  We had no seatbelts.  But don´t worry, he gave ample warning by beeping his horn through each of lights.  Hello South American cities.  I think I probably should have been fearing for my life at least a little bit, but I figured I should just sit back and enjoy the lack of traffic cops who would ever think of pulling us over. So that´s what I did.

I could tell stories for hours about my first two days here but I´ll try to keep things short and sweet.  Goldi´s parents condo is beautiful.  Food is about a doller a meal.  Everyone is friendly and willing to help.  Life is good. I am crossing my fingers that hiking some of the eight gigantic volcanoes around is in my near future.  After that, it´s off to learn how to grow my own food.  I´ll send some pictures as soon as I can.  I have to find somewhere that I can upload them to the internet first.  Keep in touch! I would love to hear about all of your lives while I´m here.  Email me whenever.  I can´t guarantee there will be a prompt response, but I´ll get around to it at some point in time, when internet availability permits.

Here are a few pictures of my first days here.

The taxi ride from Quito to Cotacachi

Cayambe

Imbabura- I think the mountains are calling me

Sun room in the condo

Main room in the condo