Mount Cotopaxi Cures All Ills
Trip Start
Jan 03, 2007
1
7
18
Trip End
Jan 21, 2007
Banos,
Ecuador
Thursday, January 11, 2007
This morning, we packed everything up and drove up to the Cotopaxi national park. Unfortunately, not five minutes in the car, I got this MASSIVE head-ache and started feeling nauseous. I took a Acetomenophen, hoping it would go away during the 45 minute car drive to the park... Unfortunately, the nausea only got worse and the road in the actual park was extremely bumpy and in terrible shape with lots of tight turns... Needless to say, it didn't help my condition and we were expecting to fly from a very high altitude (4000 meters above sea level, much higher than our hostel). Well, on the way, after being apparently green colored, I slammed open the van window next to me and out came my entire breakfast. It was food poisoning from the night before: probably bad preserved bananas. The good news is that the nausea almost completely disappeared after expunging my system of the poison. It cured so well in fact that Henri, Benoit, Martin and I were able to hike up one of the slopes of Mount Cotopaxi when the conditions became unfavorable for flight
Chungharas Lunch
! We did not get to fly, but we did manage to hike up to the refuge and then the glacier at 4200 meters above sea level! It was no easy task! But I managed to do it in one go and the glacier, the peak and the view were all worth the hike: lack of oxygen and scolding sun included! Henri even showed us a super duper accelerated descent technique not unlike a ski slalom, which was great fun and divided our descent by a factor of four.In the afternoon, we drove to Banos and lost a lot of altitude (I believe we are at 1300 meters above sea level at the foot of the active volcano on which Banos is built. Surprisingly, the massive altitude change has had no effect on us (unlike our initial plane landing in high altitude in Quito). Before ending up at the hostel and then restaurant with French all over the menu, we tried to fly the local soaring site... It had perfectly centered wind, although strong, around 16:00 and we learned that it was mostly a combination of dynamic and thermal wind. The wind was VERY strong (35-30 km/h), so we let the most experienced pilots fly first: Henri, Michel, Benoit and some locals. I was hesitant to launch because the wind was stronger than I'm used to launching in and Benoit seemed to be stuck on the top of a hill, not moving... Then, a little while later, Henri (the first to leave), executed a top landing at the launch with big ears enabled all the way down and he then got dragged by the wind around a big dusty field
Cotopaxi Parking on the Slope
. Not long after, we noticed Michel was losing altitude with big ears enabled way off the four official landing zones (two top and two below). Previously, he had been rising in a thermal in the valley WITH BIG EARS (a rapid descent technique) enabled! So, I decided not to fly and Henri, Martin, Jean-Roch and I watched Benoit's and Michel's landing adventure as it happened... We were all very nervous and sought radio confirmation of their safety once we saw that they had landed (we actually lost visual contact with Benoit for a while). Both Michel and Benoit executed emergency landings at two different areas: Benoit actually managed to crash land in one of the two landing zones below and Michel managed to crash land in a field on the side of the ridge. An american tourist pilot actually disappeared and his local guide lost sight of him too... Amazingly, he was later spotted safe and sound by a local villager who saw him land in his tomato field. The american and local guide were in an odd (unacceptable by our standards) situation: neither had a radio or cellular phone to communicate with each other! Anyway... Everyone is well, nothing broken, and we had a good French-inspired meal at a local cafe in Banos.By the way, Banos means 'baths' in Spanish... The town is renowned for it's volcanic thermal springs! I'll try to fit that in our schedule as we are here for two nights... Sleeping next to an officially active volcano! Tomorrow, we are supposed to fly at the same site as this afternoon... Michel and Benoit seem to have renounced this schedule and I may do the same since the wind conditions are apparently always strong here.
