Rumipamba De Las Rosas Hotel Cotopaxi

... without its challenges. At the waterfall, Jody stripped down to his swimmers and jumped in. A couple of others also went in and I followed. It was the coldest water I had ever been in and cold enough to almost freeze me rigid. I couldn&#8217;t get out quick enough. Christie took a photo of my jump but it wasn&#8217;t a good photo so she asked me to go in again. There was no way that was going to happen. <br><br>When we returned to base we had a hot shower ...

... from the city up a narrow coblestone road to the high andes. the truck dropped us off with our bags in the center of the Avenida de Volcanes, a valley at 4000 meters surrounded by nine volcanoes. The clouds were covering it, but we would soon see Cotopaxi with its massive glacier towering over us. <br><br>The owner of the hostal in Quito agreed to let us stay in our tents on his farm property near Cotopaxi. Our first afternoon ...

... some photos and headed off. The guide dropped me at the side of the road near the farm to try to catch the local bus that was due to leave in like 2 hours. Stuff waiting by the roadside for two hours freezing my nuts off again, I hitched a ride with a nice old couple who dropped me alongside the freeway in the next town where I needed to catch the bus to Latacunga.<br>What I didnt know is that there was a huge festival on in Latacunga this week. i arrived ...

... warm welcoming eyes and a hug to match, greeted and kissed us even before finding us a room. Sure enough we had a room with two double beds, a private bathroom and a tv, a classic hotel style room. After dropping off our gear the landlady invited us to join her from some coffee, biscuits and juice for Jody and Niamh. <br><br>We asked for directions to the Mama Negra festival, which was expected to go along an adjacent street in about an hour. There were ...

... Phil, and Lina returned from their romp at the refuge, we packed up (excluding Andreas, who stayed another night at Cotopaxi) and caught a ride into the nearby town of Muchachi. From there, we caught a bus to Baños.<br><br> I´ll have another entry about Baños (including my jungle adventure - yes, mom, it was with a guide) up tomorrow hopefully. We´ll be here for one or two more days before heading off to either Latacunga or Cuenca.<br><br>Hasta luego,<br>Dan<br>

... very arid and its at 4000m so there are some pretty interesting things to see at this altitude. The best way to describe it is that it looks like a hillside suffering massive erosion with huge cracks and canyons; and dryland salinity causing nothing to grow. But its just naturally like this.<br> <br>We went with a local company who picked us up in their beat up old 4WD, much more what I was expecting the transport to be like around here ...

... out of the city, the first toll we come to is free for motorbikes (well unless they just felt sorry for us as I think we may have gone the wrong way, queueing up with the cars like first timers with all the sales guys shouting at us either that we can´t go that way or that we should filter to the front). The next toll was $0.20 for bikes, rip off!! <br><br>Lovely scenery once out of the city (and even some amazing ...

... the mountain/volcano/glacier itself. There are two popular alternatives when visiting Cotapaxi. Both involve being driven to the mountain 'parking lot' at about 4500m - a flatish piece of ground on the side of the mountain. Then, you can either climb to approximately 5000m where the glacier is and come back on the same day, or camp at the 5000m point overnight and ascend to the summit leaving at midnight later that day. I entertained the thought of climbing ...

... much nicer room, free wifi and we are right in the centre of town. We arrived early so we've already had our lunch, a bargain at 1.50 usd, and now we are relaxing for the rest of the afternoon.<br><br>yesterday, because it was fairly overcast most of the day, I very foolishly didn't wear suncream or my hat, resulting in my face being very red and slightly swollen last night. Also, I've broken my sunglasses, so I have no eye protection at the moment, we now have superglue ...

... le cratère se rapproche... et une fois au sommet cest un espece de plat, le cratere en dessous se devoile c magique vraiment on a une vue a 360º sur les montagnes alentours c super beau... on est 5897m daltitude. il est 6h15, on a mis +/-5h pour monter cest bien. en fait on est les 1ers, la 2eme cordee arrive Rodriguo, Fray et Raph. on est contents comme des gosses, fotos et deja il est temps de redescendre, parce quavec le soleil et la chaleur, plus on attend plus ...