| May 24, 2006 - Quito, Ecuador (back again)
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 | | show all 53 | | Archway entrance to Parque El Ejido | | View of Quito from atop cable car | | Top of cable car in distance, and Quito beyond | | |
| I arrived in Quito that night, Friday the 19th, and took a cab back to Centro del Mundo, the original hostel I stayed in when I landed on October 5th from New York. That was the other reason to push on to Quito this night, Mondays Wednesdays & Fridays were still free Rum and Coke nights at Centro del Mundo. Though this time when I arrived it was much less crowded and much tamer than that first night of my trip in South America.
I was really tired so I just stayed in the hostel and talked with some of the travellers there. Though I was cmpletely ecstatic when I saw they had the NBA playoffs on the TV there! All I had been reading about online when I checked up on basketball (which was every time I ever went online) was how exciting these playoffs had been, and how they were possibly one of the best postseasons ever in the NBA. The writers seemed to be saying to me, "Anyone who loves basketball should not be missing these games, they are the best ever, I don't care if you are in South America, you should have come home for this!". Anyway, I gleefully watched the end of Game 6 between the Mavs and the Spurs that night, and was then in my bed asleep by midnight.
The early night allowed me to wake up at 8am on Saturday and get a good start on one of my final days. I once again set out in search of tours to do Cotopaxi, and found that they charged much more to leave from Quito than Latacunga, obviously. And still I could not find a partner. But I was not distressed, I could even go Monday-Tuesday if it came to it. So instead I just walked around a whole lot and reaquainted myself with the city that I did not get to explore all that much my frist time through.
At the hostel I met a cool group of Belgians staying there so we spent a lot of the afternoon together. At night I got to practice my new-found Texas Hold 'Em skills, and then we all went out together.
On Sunday morning my plan was to take the city's gondola up to one of the surrounding peaks and then continue to hike up from there a bit. It was a way to get some more adventure in, and again to add to my acclimitization, since many of the tour guides warned that I would most likely have problems if I was not actively acclimitizing, though even this would be insufficient. However, when I woke up Sunday it was completely overcast and rainy. I was beginning to think I may not be going to Cotopaxi after all. The rest of this day was actually very uneventful for one of my final days. I hung around the hostel a lot, got in touch with people through email, and walked around some more when the weather cleared.
By the afternoon I had given up on Cotopaxi. I never found another person so it would have cost me a lot. And then there was a good chance I would not have made it to the top since I had not spent a lot of time at altitude, so it would have been a real waste. I recognized that these were all excuses, but I was okay with that too. And I made some alternate plans that would still be cool.
So on Monday I awoke and the weather was a bit better, so I headed out to the gondola. From the top I started following a trail even higher up into the mountains behind, which a bunch of tourists do. But by the time I was half-way up the clouds had rolled in again, so that I was in a thick fog, and could not see the peaks above me nor the city below, and so I turned around and went back down. Again, the rest of this day was very low-key, and I managed to catch another playoff game at a local bar while eating dinner. This was the day I also went out to the consulate and made sure that everything was indeed okay with my passport and visa, and sure enough it was. It was during this day that I came up with a funny little thought: Even if I'm not ready to be done with this trip, my belongings are telling me to go home. I have lost the shorts that zipper on to make my only other pants than jeans, and my jeans are finally starting to get large holes all over them. My second pair of hiking socks disappeared in some laundry somewhere. My iPod is crap and works only occasionally and my camera has issues with the USB drive and holding its battery charge. A large bottle of olive oil bottle spilled in backpack, my caribbeaners got taken by an airline in Brazil, and my hair clippers don't work anymore. That was all I could think of in a quick jotting of notes. Not to mention money, which was gona a while ago. And yet it all flew by so fast, and if it weren't for my lack of funds, I could very easily go on like this for a while longer.
On Tuesday was my final excursion, and I went to Mitad del Mundo, which means "Middle of the World." It is a monument demarcating the exact line of the equator and is quite a tourist trap. Although it was later discovered the real line is actually a bit further away, so next door to this is a little dinky museum called "Museo Solar Inti Nan", based around the actual geographical equator, and there are all sorts of cheesy science experiements you can do there. On this same outing I made it out to the Pululahua crater, which is also an old volcano, that actually split down one side after an eruption, and filled in with earth. The amazing thing is that now people actually live down there in the crater, and they have it wired for electricity. For water though they have to trap rain, and while they grow primarily corn and a small amount of a few other crops, they have to go to local markets to get most of their supplies. It is the 2nd largest inhabited crater on earth, the first is in Panama. It is 300m deep with the rim at 3,000 and the floor at 2,700, and 4km in diameter, but only one side of the large split is inhabited. There are 15 school-aged children that live in there, and the goverment pays for one teacher to come out from Quito every day to teach them. I imagine she is quite a remarkable woman, heading out there each day, descending into the crater, teaching a day of classes, hiking back out, and then making the trip home. We went out here with a small guide service available at Mitad del Mundo and that is how I got all these facts. He told us there are about 100 families living there, 60 of which are considered permanent, and 300 people total!
I got back from there, showered up and treated myself to a nice final dinner (timed to watch more basketball). I made sure I had everything packed up and in order, and then it was suddenly my last night. I didn't have too many options, but the Belgians were also ending a long trip the next day so we decided to celebrate together. Though we just stayed at the hostel, had some Rum & Cokes, and played more cards with some of the people there. We stayed up late enough though that there was no point in me sleeping, since I had to head out to the airport at 3am. On Thursday May 25th, I was heading home.
Really, it was a very anti-climatic ending, but it almost seemed fitting at this point. Ever since I said goodbye to Carmin and Dan in La Paz I began the "end" portion of my trip, and it was a slow crawl to the finish line ever since. Much more of a slow fading out than any big bang grand finale type ending. Which really, after all I had been through, was probably impossible to achieve on an appropriate level anyway.
Want to read the last email I sent from South America? Here it is, with a lot of repeated info:
Hello!
Well, my plans changed 1,000 times and resembled nothing like what I wrote in the last big email. I am here in Quito, somehow on the final day of my whole trip, and not quite sure how I feel about it all. But since I have kept you all updated more or less throughout my trip, I will save the philosophical reflections for another time and just let you know how I spent my final days here.
In the end, it wasn't so impressively exciting. More of a fade out to the trip than a final bang, but that was somewhat on purpose and I am ok with it. So, I did indeed spend Friday venturing out to Quilotoa to visit the old volcano that is now filled with a lake. I ended up doing the trip out there with an old Czech woman I originally met crossing the border from Peru, and just coincidentally got on the same bus with her Friday morning from Latacunga. But once we got to Quilotoa I wanted to do the walk around the rim of the crater, and she clearly couldn't, so I headed out on my own. This was an amazing 4.5 hours, starting with a beautiful day and eventually watching the clouds roll in until the there as a thick smoky roof covering the crater like a lid, with me inside of it. A great day of alone time, some final enjoyment in the amazing nature of this place, and nonstop thoughts about everything I had just done the past 8 months and would/should be doing for the rest of my life. You know, simple light things like that.
But on Friday when I got back there was still no other people to climb the Cotopaxi volcano with me, which meant it would be very expensive to do alone, and so I left for Quito Friday night with the plans of doing the climb Monday-Tuesday no matter what. So Saturday I enjoyed being i Quito again, researched a lot of my climbing options from there or other excursions I could do instead, and spent it as I normally would my first day in a new place. Which is, aimlessly walking around and enjoying the people, the vibe, and the scenery of the new place. The fact that it was Saturday meant tons of markets everywhere which were cool to see and wander through.
After weighing about 5 different options, I decided I would spend Sunday taking Quito's cable car up, and then hiking even beyond the top up to the old dormant volcano behind that at 4,700m. See, Cotopaxi's climb reaches nearly 6,000m and altitude sickness is a serious threat so you need to be acclimitized. Well, I had thought I reached 5,000m on the Quilotoa day, but I was way wrong and only got to 3,900 for a few minutes. Anyway, Sunday I woke up and it was slightly rainy in the city, and the entire mountain the cable car climbs was hidden behind thick clouds. Not the best day for an ascent up that. So my plans changed, I decided I would not climb Cotopaxi, which wasn¢¥t so bad since I would save tons of money that could have been wasted if the altitude forced me to turn around before the summit, and I wasn¢¥t so sure how badly I wanted to do it anymore anyway. It was more just so that I could do SOMETHING final and big, but climbing wasn't such an attraction. And still, I was going to do a day trip on Tuesday to Cotopaxi National Park which would mean I could still see all the sites there, I just wouldn't reach the summit, but I would be back the same day. So instead Sunday was a chill rainy day, and I got to watch Game 7 of the Pistons-Cavs game.
Instead I spent Monday on the cable car and climbing up the volcano behind it, though still did not reach the peak since the clouds rolled in once again. I also took care of a lot of the things I needed to do before leaving, and actually decided to skip Cotopaxi all together. After the days hike up the cable car, another long day of early wake-up and late arrival back to Quito just wasn't appealing. I would much rather stay here in Quito, enjoying the culture instead of the nature of the area, which is something that has lacked a bit on this trip. And besides, I had SEEN Cotopaxi, just not close up, and I had climbed another volcano, way back in Chile with Harris. In some ways this may be me justifying it, but anyone, thats what I decided. Maybe it was just laziness, but who cares. So yesterday instead I did a short half-day trip to the the "Middle of the World", which is a little tourist trap outside of Quito right on the line of the Equator. But still it was a fun place to check out, and I also went to a science museum next door which is on the real Equator line (because the monument is off by a few hundred meters), and did some tacky yet interesting equatorial science experiements. And then finally I also went out to visit another old volcano nearby, whose crater is actually inhabited by a small village of people. One of the largest inhabited craters in the world, and the largest one that is still active (though no eruptions in 2,500 years). That was the most fascinating part of the day since the guide I went with was actually pretty knowledgeable about the lives and culture of the people living in there.
And now I am here. Probably gonna wander around my final day here again, and maybe check out a museum or something here in Quito. There is one that is supposed to be great, but I have never been much of a museum guy. There is a cool group of 4 Belgian guys staying at my hostel who also leave to go back home tomorrow after a long backpacking trip, so we decided we would celebrate our final night together. I am staying at the same hostel I did when I first landed that original Wednesday back in October, and once again it is Rum and Coke night, so celebrating should come easy!
I get back to NY tomorrow in the evening, and hope to hear from all of you shortly thereafter.
Chau!
Adam |
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