Adventures in Ecuador
Letter 2 - The End of the Carihuairazo Experience.
Hello again,
As you MUST remember, my last letter ended in
the last night of a 4 days trek in Chimborazo reserve.
The situation was as follows:
1) In the first 3 days of the trek there was
non-ending fog with some rain.
2) Due to the bad visibility, we couldn't find our way.
3) Our clothes were all wet and we went sleeping
hoping for good weather.
In the next morning we opened our tent door with hope,
but to our disappointment, ……………..Fog again – no
visibility at all. In the night we were thinking about
the right way that we should take. In the morning we
put on our wet clothes and wet shoes and started to
walk where we thought was the last option to cross
that pass. Rain and wind soon started as well… We were
walking and to our great happiness reached some point,
which suited something in our map. We thought that now
we were on the good way and we would find our way out
of here but…no. We reached huge mountain walls,
which we couldn't cross. What are we going to do now –
we were hesitating. We tried all we could to find our
way and simply couldn't find it. The only thing that
we can do now is go down to the valley floor, which is
supposed to be below the mountain (remember that we
can't see the valley due to the poor visibility…).
>From the valley we will work our way out of this
region.
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In the next morning we opened our tent door with hope,
but to our disappointment, … Fog again – no visibility at all. |
This is what we did. We found some way down.
Because of the heavy rains we were soaking all the way
in deep swamps where we could hardly pool out our
shoes. We were all wet and freezing. We used all our
extra clothes and almost nothing remained dry except
from the last pair of socks, which we used as gloves
since our hands got frozen in our already wet gloves.
Our fingers were so frozen that Nir couldn't close
properly his rucksack and could hardly walk. Also,
because of the never-ending rain we couldn't stop for
eating and just grabbed one small pita-bread each, and
ate it as is while walking...
We made a big de-tour, encircled the mountain and
found our way out of there EVENTUALLY – all wet, but
very happy that we could get away.
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This was definitely our last walk in Ecuador. From
there we went to rest in a farm in a village called
Vilcabamba. There we had a swimming pool, Jacuzzi,
horse riding and of course - a lot of sun with which
we could warm up and dry our things.
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Horse riding in Vilcabamba. |
Vilcabamba was our last stop in Ecuador… and tomorrow
we are going to cross the border to Peru…
Last modified: Sun Aug 17th 21:05:00 IST 2003