Hiking in the Cold

That next Saturday, I was supposed to cook Korean food for my family, but we decided it would take too much time since we woke up late, aka 10 am. So we postponed it and instead made this really good potato soup. We pretty much just chilled at home since the next day we were climbing Cotopaxi, the second tallest mountain in Ecuador at 5080 (or something like that) meters. It's an active volcano that can erupt at anytime and it's always snowing/always cold there, so no vegetation can grow. There were really cool volcano rocks that I picked up, though.

Anyway on Sunday, we woke up really early and met up with my Rocío's cousin, Marcelo, and his host student Maddy, who I talked about before I think. We drove for around 2 hours to Cotopaxi where there is a parking lot 4500 meters up the mountain. From there, we hiked up to the refuge, a building where people can sleep or rest if they plan on hiking all the way to the peak. It wasn't a really hard walk physically, but it was super freezing because it snows in Cotopaxi. That day, it wasn't actually snowing, but since there's always snow in this area, it's always cold and the wind is probably below zero. I thought my face was going to freeze off. And since it's really high up, it's harder to breathe, even if we're just walking literally 10 steps. It took around 45 minutes to an hour to walk to the refuge.

As we were reaching the refuge, we saw two foxes! It was really cool because they're usually never there since it's too cold for anything to grow/live on the mountain. When we got there, we got to drink the best hot chocolate ever (probably because we were freezing), and had Oreos and this other Ecuadorian cookie that was delicious. After resting for 30 minutes and then taking pictures, we started our walk down. When we were hiking up, actually, we took the zig-zag way because the shorter way was really steep and would have been much harder to climb up.

But we took this way down since it's easier to go down and it's shorter. It was kind of slippery, though, because there was a lot of sand and random huge rocks that we tripped on. I think I fell twice, but Maddy and Daniel fell more than three times. Maybe it was three times. I can't remember. But every time someone fell, I don't know why we all thought it was hilarious and started taking a bunch of pictures. Great times.

On our way back home, we had picked up a hitch hiker from Argentina who left his country 9 months ago to travel the world. And now he was in Ecuador. I personally didn't get to talk to him because I was sleeping... But Daniel told me about him. He said that the guy smelled like he had been traveling for 9 months. LOL Pretty sweet. We dropped him off somewhere along the way, and then headed home.

We had lunch at Marcelo's place, which was really delicious. We had hornado (baked pig?) with this really good sweet/sour sauce that you put on it with mote and choclo - aka the usual Ecuadorian food. It was delicious. Then we got to play with their puppies. Their dog, Chispa, just had puppies three weeks ago from now, and they are the most precious things I've ever seen. I was so in love with them, and I guess Marcelo's family realized that because they offered to give me one. And I was ECSTATIC!! So now I get to take a super cute Cocker Spaniel baby home in December. They said they'd keep taking care of her for the next two months, obviously, and then my host mom would arrange papers so that I could take her home with me when I leave Ecuador. Pictures are on Smugmug.com, or will be very soon! I am so excited!!

Then it was time to leave Los Chillos forever, which was really sad. My family dropped me off at the usual drop-off place in front of our school. I almost cried when I left because my host family had been super caring and loving for the month I had stayed with them. But I still have a lot of time in Ecuador, and we had planned a bunch of things for the weekends, so I'm glad I can still see them once in a while.  We then went off to the Alston Hotel to rest before the Amazon! :D