On a spur of the moment decsion we were invited to stay with Jorge's (pronounced Hor-Hey) family in Quito. With a hand drawn map showing the bare minimum of 3 streets we jumped in a taxi, however if you listened carefully you could hear the only two brain cells in our taxi driver's head bumping together reminding him to breath, so the expected 5 minute jouney actually took 45.
We needed to get up high to acclimatise for our two high altitude expeditions; Cotopaxi at 5897m, the world's highest active volcano and Chimborazo at 6310m, the furthest point from the centre of the earth. We accidently bought maps on A2 size paper, that had we needed them would have acted like the spiniker of a 49er racing dinghy and dragged us bodily from the summit of Rucu Pichincha and over the sprawling city of Quito. Keen to bump up our red blood cell count we took the Teleferico again the next day and climbed Rucu Pichincha in the snow.
On Saturday we took a day off from our physically draining, head-ache inducing acclimatisation schedule to visit the world renowned Otavalo market. Shoulder to shoulder we squeezed and shimmed visiting exoctic colour stalls with llama emblazoned clothing of every description. The highlight of any dreaded washing up stint at Bellavista was whenever the BIG SPOON came down to be washed: so naturally when I saw a 50cm wooden spoon for $3 I had to have it. Unless you are BFG sized (or the projected size of Scott when he stops growing) there is little practical use for my BIG SPOON or little spade but when in Rome.... If Olly Murs and Fiona Bruce from News at 10 ever get together then we saw it cinematically first on the bus back from Otavalo. I have no idea what happened as my Spanish still hasn't progressed much from 'me gusta....' and pointing to objects that I now supposedly like, but they were identical to the buttoned up Fred Perry t-shirts and dodgey glasses!
When we got home before being taken to Harry Potter with Vivi and Esteban, we ate a delicious meal of crabs. I was unsurprisingly retarded at smashing the crabs with a hammer and 10 minutes later everything within a 5m radius, including Kirst and the ceiling , were covered in salty intestines. This resulted in a negative calorie meal and turned me into a human maraka from the crab shell bouncing inside my stomach. Vivi and Esteban also took us out in Qutio where we drank Mango Mojitos at a bar with a beach upstairs.
We travelled to Papagayo, our hosteria for the climbing expeditions where the food portions were barely adequate for anorexic pygmy dwarves (they couldn't be bulimic as there wasn't enough food for them to throw up!). But it is a beautiful place and everyone we have met here is very friendly....plus our room is called Diana, blissful South African memories :) We climbed Iliniza Norte with Luiz our guide in preparation for heading into the stratosphere.
We set off just after one in the morning. The bright lights of Quito glowed in the distance, whilst the moon gave us enough light to render our head torches useless. After 45 mins struggle against the volcanic ash of Cotopaxi we secured our crampons, dug out our ice axes and began getting intimate with the first ice field. Fernando, our guide, led as matriarch as we raced the clouds to the summit. Deep crevases plunged into never ending darkness as we crossed snow bridges in the biting ice-cold wind the forze the water in our bottles. As we climbed a woodpecker began knocking on my head, and with each passing metre he was joined by friends. By the last 100m my altitude sickness was such a constant, never ending pounding that given the choice I'd rather wander the streets of Johanesburg shouting 'N****r'! My legs ached with exhustion, after 2 hours sleep I was mentally closing down but being a little bit too competative meant there was no way that I wasn't going to get to the top. The sun crept agonisingly slowly over the horizon as we summited, glinting off the glacier and providing the most amazing view.
Back at the hosteria we relaxed by getting insanely warm by accidently boiling ourselves in the 45 degrees jaccuzi with our new Swiss friends and building good enough relationships with the plastic table football players to make it onto my Christmas card list. Roo (6) v Kirst (4).
The weatherman took one look at our newly purchased, overly vibrant pijama bottoms, vomitted in his mouth and decided to turn our recent good fortune on the slopes of Cotopaxi for the worse. The wind was pulling rocks the size of Monty the Mini and hurling them towards 3 would be Chimborazo conquerers. We had boldly set of at 11pm in our naiveity (Kirst wearing 9 layers) but less than a quater of the way up Fernando sensibly called it quits and we headed back down. The cherry on top, Fernando didn't let the decade or two age gap deter him and hit on Kirst! The only possible silver lining from this collosal Chimborazo fiasco; the perfect excuse to start planning a returnm trip back to this wonderful country so I can take the eluding volcano and castrate it! To get over the bitter dissapointment of Chimborazo we are going to try and Ecuadorian form of bungee jumping in the adventurers mecca, Banos and then fly to the Galapagos to make friends with some Giant Tortoises.
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