Wonderful Cities: Napoli

Napoli, or Naples, is a vibrant city. One moment it is chaotic and energetic and the next it seems like all of its dwellers have fallen under a lethargic spell. When I went there back in 2009 I fell in love with it completely. Maybe it was the fact that I had been a year away from home, and amidst the order and perfection that I found in Europe, Napoli reminded me of the messy cities in South America. It made feel like I had found something I knew very well on the other side of the world.

Rucu Pichincha

Its only tuesday and it feels like its been a really long time since I climbed Rucu Pichincha on sunday. What can I say...it's been a busy week...or a busy monday and tuesday.

I spent most of last week getting psychologically ready for Rucu Pichincha. This is a mountain that everyone who was grown up in quito knows about, we live right below it. Rucu stands 4,660 meters tall, like a king. It is a volcano, but it hasn't been really active in thousands of years. Its son, Guagua Pichincha (quichua for baby pichincha), however did give us a scare back in 1999, covering our streets with ashes for days a couple of times during the year.

Climbing up to the top of Rucu Pichincha doesn't have to be hard. In fact its so close to Quito that it has become a normal place for national and international tourists to go to. And because of that there are easy ways to get up there, including a cable car and a pretty easy path that gets to the top.

Of course we didn't take the easy route. I am not even capable of imagining our guide Jaime ever taking any easy route anywhere. Instead we started out just outside of Quito through the Quebrada de Rumipamba. Where we started we must have been at 2,950 meters, which means that to get to the top of the mountain we climbed up around 1,700 meters. Now that I think about it, that is a lot of climbing, in fact it took us 7 hours to reach the top of the volcano.

We started out here because its quite scenic. The first hour and a half was a really steep climb through very lush vegetation. During this part of the hike I felt like a real explorer. Since its not such a frequented route you really have to push yourself through the forest, pushing aside branches and holding on to whatever you can get a hold of. By the end of the first half hour my hands and arms were covered in scratches and cuts...I guess my skin is just not tough enough. When we finally got out of the forest we started walking through the usual pajonal. I actually like this type of landscape better because you don't have to wrestle against feisty and thorny bushes, and you get to appreciate the scenery a lot more.

At this point we took a short detour to a smaller peak called Cundur Huachana (also known as the Quebrada de los Condores). This peak is 4,100 meters tall and it has a beautiful view of the valley and part of the city below.

We continued on our way, we were supposed to reach a small "cave" where we would meet another group of people who had taken the easier route starting at the Teleférico (the cable car). Once we met up with them we stopped to rest and gather our energy. At that point the whole group would split again. There were two options, you could either go up the Arenal or rock climbing through the Paso de la Muerte (it could be translated into the path of death).

Now the Arenal is much less scary, but it is a bit annoying to climb up that way. Its a desolate area with extremely loose soil so for every step you take you feel like you are falling back 2 steps. Its really much more fun to go down that way than up. However, the Paso de la Muerte is incredibly scary. You start out by climbing on a very rocky side for about an hour. Then you reach the actual Paso de la Muerte which is a short maybe 4 meters long path which is maybe 70 cm wide. And its rocky. And all you have are steep falls on each side. Its a famous spot for rock climbers, you do have to be very careful. I guess most people go across or climb it with ropes. We didn't because as I told you before Jaime is a fan of doing things the harder way. A couple of people have actually died here, but I didn't know about this until after I had crossed, and I am glad because if not I would have freaked out.

Now I can say I have crossed and survived. And I am so glad I decided to go this way and not through the Arenal. In previous posts I have written about my fear of rock climbing, so this was definitely a big step for me. The truth is I was terrified most of the time, but hey I made it across and I am proud of myself.

:D!

After the Paso de la Muerte I thought we would be pretty much close to the peak, but we still had an hour or an hour and a half of climbing to do to get there. So we climbed some more.

After actually getting to the top we had some food, rested for a bit and we started coming down. This time we took the easy way down through the Arenal and then through the path that takes you down to the Teleférico and then we took the cable car to Quito. It was a great day and a great climb.

Taita Imbabura

Legends say that Taita Manuel Imbabura is a wise man who lives in the volcano. Every morning he would wake up early to make sure that everyone did their job. He made sure the river flowed in the right direction, that the wind didn't stop for too long to speak with the mountain trees and that every man and woman were doing their work. People respected his wisdom and feared being punished by the volcano, so they all performed their roles. When Manuel Imbabura was young he would go out at night for peaceful walks. During one of these walks he came upon Maria Isabel Cotacachi and fell in love with her. He visited her often and she fell in love with him and married him. The smaller nearby mountains Yanaurco and Cotacachi are considered their children. 

Taita Imbabura is the king of steep walks. Climbing up felt like being on a step master for 4 hours at more than 4000 meters above sea level with 2 liters of water on my back. However, by now, I do feel a bit more used to climbing mountains and my legs don't hurt as much as the first time.

We left Quito at 5 in the morning and headed towards Otavalo. We went past Otavalo and through a small town called la Esperanza. It was 9:15am when we got off the bus and started climbing. From the very beginning the climb was steep and it only got steeper as we went and I am pretty sure our guide, Jaime, was guiding us at a pretty fast pace. We got to the second highest peak after 3 1/2 hours, or maybe 4. I forgot to look at the time when we made it to the top, I guess I was too concentrated on actually making it there.

The first hour or two were really beautiful because we hadn't gone into the clouds that were covering the higher peaks. From there you could see the valleys down below and even a lake, which I think might have been el Lago San Pablo. I'm not really sure though. Once we got higher up we went into the clouds that were covering the peak. The trail got steeper and rocks started appearing. The final part of the mountain was mostly easy rock climbing. Its too bad there was so much fog, we couldn't really see what surrounded us. Occasionally the fog would clear enough for us to see the shapes of rocky peaks in the distance, and by distance I really mean 10-25 meters.

It was a really enjoyable climb, however the hike back down was a little bit harder and left my knees and ankles a bit sore.

Fear of rocks

Sometimes it doesn't help that I don't have too much free time. Of course, work is part of the issue. I wake up go to work, get home do my Mandarin homework, go to class and come back at night a bit tired and then I busy myself with random things like chatting with friends, reading the news, eating, talking to my parents, etc. If I could I would multiply my hours so that apart from all that I could paint, write, sew and do all sorts of projects that I have in my mind. But then the good thing about being busy is that I don't have too much time to get bored.

However, I wish I had written this post earlier in the week when my thoughts were still fresh. Now I can't even remember what I wanted to say about the weekend.

Last weekend I attempted to climb up my second mountain; this time the Chiles Volcano in the frontier with Colombia. Since this mountain is a bit far from Quito we left on saturday morning towards the north of the country. That day we went just a little bit past a small town called El Angel, which is in the andean paramo. We stayed at the Hosteria Polylepis and it was beautiful. If you don't know what the paramo is like well let me describe it. Its usually very cold and high up in the mountains, but you can only find it between the tropics. Its very humid and it rains a lot all year long. There are different types of paramos and the one we went to is famous for its frailejones. Frailejones are a whole family of plants that grow only in Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador. They look like a bunch of fuzzy bunny ears stuck together, and where we went there were tons of these plants everywhere.

That first night at the Hosteria Polylepis we went out for a walk to a nearby waterfall. It was a short muddy walk, but absolutely beautiful. Luckily the place we stayed at rents rubber boots, if not our mountain shoes would have been completely wet the next day and I can't imagine it being fun to climb up a mountain with wet shoes.

After our walk we had trout for dinner and then we went on a night walk with torches before going to sleep. On sunday we woke up around 4:30 am because we still had more or less 2 hours of road to get to the volcano. We might have gotten a bit lost, and the road might have been a bit longer than we expected, but in the end we got to the Chiles and started climbing at 10am.

The climb was a lot easier than the one at the Pasochoa, however we were a bit higher up in altitude. The Pasochoa's peak is at 4199mt above sea level and for the Chiles we started climbing at 4100mt because the highest peak reaches 4720mt.

The hike up started up pretty easily, we went through the pajonal and the frailejones. Then the scenery changed and it was a very wet floor with a thick type of grass...I really don't know how to describe it. Either way it didn't last too long, after a couple of minutes the rocks starting appearing until in the end it was all rock.

Now I know rocks don't seem too scary, but they are, at least to me they are. The climb did get pretty steep at times and the problem with these rocks was that they weren't really set into the mountain, so they kept on falling apart or rolling away and so it was a bit tense most of the time. However I enjoyed it, maybe its masochism...or who knows what because there were a couple of moments when I was pretty scared. But maybe that's just me being silly.

I think I climbed up to 4700 meters...only to the bottom of the second highest peak, and that was it. I chickened out. The truth is the final part of the path, the part that went to the highest peak, looked pretty scary. It was raining and slippery and well I am scared of rocks and heights.

But it was still a very enjoyable climb, and I don't feel bad about not making it to the top. I still got the same rush the next day where all I wanted to do was climb another mountain. So that's what I plan to do, in two days I will be climbing the Imbabura!!!

Wonderful Cities: Paris

I had the chance go to go Paris back in 2008. It was Christmas when I went...and although I've heard Paris is beautiful in the summer, but I have to say it is quite impressive and calm in the winter. Sadly I was only there for 5 days. During that time I pretty much covered most of the touristic sites but I know that if I had stayed there a bit longer I would have gotten a better feel of the actual city...I guess I'll have to go back some day. 

My first mountain

On sunday I climbed my first mountain. Its a little bit embarrassing to admit to it since I have lived in Ecuador pretty much all my life, and this is a country that people from all over the world come to just to climb mountains. But at least now I can say that I've climbed a mountain. The truth is I've been to many mountains here, but this is the first time that I climb all the way to the top.

The whole experience was a lot more difficult that I thought it would be.

We left Quito at 6am and at 8am we got off the bus and started climbing. The first part was pretty easy.

We walked for about an hour and then stopped to rest for a few minutes and to have some food. Then the climb up got a little bit steeper, but still pretty easy and relaxing. Our plan was to go up to the second highest point of the Pasochoa and then the the highest point. After another long hour of climbing we got to our second stop. There the group divided. A couple of people decided to go with one of the guides through an easier route which went directly to the highest point, while the rest of us decided to take the harder way up, this way we could do a little rock climbing along the way.  Now I am not an expert rock climber, in fact, it was only the second time in my life that I was attempting to rock climb. The truth is I was terrified. The wall wasn't exactly vertical, in fact I am pretty sure it was not too steep either, but I am very scared of rock climbing because well all you can do is whip out some strength out of your body and push yourself up, if not the only other option is falling off the mountain which is not exactly the best choice. Once you start climbing, you can't go back down, there is only one way and its up. Luckily I wasn't the only girl practically paralyzed with fear. Two girls who were right behind me were actually crying at a point because they didn't want to keep on climbing. It was scary, and there were moments when I doubted I had the strength to go on. At other times I just wondered why on earth I had decided to climb a mountain, but in the end I was fine. I did get some help along the way from some french guy who knew what he was doing. I am glad he was there, if not I am not sure how I would have made it to the top.

At the end of that rock we were finally at the top of the second highest peak and thats where we took our third break to rest and to have some more food. The view up there is absolutely stunning.

On one side you have the mountain which is actually an extinct volcano, and on the other side there is pretty much a cliff that falls right into the crater. The crater of the Pasochoa is huge, its what's left from an eruption that happened thousands of years ago. It pretty much blew off part of the mountain so that it collapsed into the crater. The inside of the crater is now extremely fertile and full of vegetation. Most of the time you get lots of fog in the inside of the crater so it seems like one side of the mountain vanishes into nothing, but when it clears out all you can see is a dense forest inside, its really beautiful. 

After the second highest point we walked towards the peak of the volcano (the one you see in the photo above). The climb up to that one luckily didn't involve any more rock climbing, because I don't think I would have made it. Once up there we rested a bit, we got an awesome view of the Cotopaxi for just a couple of minutes and we practiced a little bit more rock climbing and some rappelling as well. 

I actually can't believe I did all that, but I am glad I did. I'm not sure if I would do it again, I'm still terrified of rock climbing, but I guess I probably will because nothing beats the feeling of accomplishment once you reach the top of a mountain.