Instead of writing an extremely long post about my family´s whole visit, I decided I´d write in in parts.
Part 1 : Cotopaxi
Elliott´s flight was delayed, by two hours. We waited at the airport with a Dutch girl thats boyfriend was on the same flight from Miami and they hadn´seen each other for 6 months or something like that. I was glad that I wasn´t her.
Anyways, Elliott finally arrived. I was looking for his long curly hair but he had cut it in between the time I left and the time he came and so I kept thinking all of these Ecuadorians were Elliott only to be suprised when I saw them fully.
Because of the delay, not many restaurants were open. We headed into the Mariscal, gringolandia, for dinner and then called it a night.
The next day, Friday, we spent in Quito. We took Chuki to the park and I think Elliott had as much fun running around unsupervised by Dad´s concern for his cast as Chuki did. =)
Saturday we left for Cotopaxi. Now planning a trip to Cotopaxi was kind of a mystery for me. Everything is very hard to decipher here in Ecuador and very few things are straight forward. So we knew we wanted to go to Cotopaxi and hike to the glacier.
As a preface, Cotopaxi is the highest active volcano in the world. Usually it has a very pronounced white glacier at the top, with very dark volcanic sand from the glacier to the bottom of the mountain. wikipedia it if you want more info, for some reason I can´t paste the link here.
So we had arranged with the hostel we were staying at for someone to pick us up at our apartment and drive us (me, Ryan, Elliott and Chuki) to the hostel. The ride was decent. As you can imagine the mountain roads are less then par. I was pretty sure Ryan was going to puke a couple of times. Chuki, on the other hand loved it. He rode most of the way with his head out of the window.
We got there and it was super overcast so we could see no mountain. We figured tomorrow would be better. But basically the long and the short of it is that the whole time we were there we only saw glimpses of this HUGE mountain because the weather was so overcast.
Anyways, the next day we hiked to the glacier, almost (we were about 50 feet short). The snow started coming down about half way up to the glacier and by the time we got to the glacier it was soo icy and the snow was coming down sideways that it was too dangerous to go any farther. Anyways, it was still really HARD and really FUN! We saw two foxes like within 15 feet of us, cool.
I was really proud of Elliott because people that have lived in Quito and acclimatized find hiking to the glacier too hard, but Elliott after one day at 10000 feet was able to do it! I believe he said it was the hardest thing he´s ever done, but don´t quote me.
The next day Elliott and I went horseback riding to the top of another mountain called Ruminahui. It was... long, 6 hours to be exact and Elliott was riding, what seemed to be, a pony, that was very very hungry. We were almost done and this storm just rolled in. Lightning struck right in front of us and it started hailing. As you can imagine, the horses started gallopping, like crazy. And there´s Elliott, one arm in a cast and can only hold on with one hand on a flying and very scared horse. Lets just say, we were glad when we finally got off, even though we were soaked.
The hostal was amazing! A perfect place for Elliott to stay in his first hostel at. I think he really had fun and enjoyed the freedom of travelling without Mom and Dad in a place with young people. All in all we had a great time.
Chuki probably had the most fun of everyone. There were four other dogs there. 2 dalmatians and 2 weiners (Maria Jose you would have died!). Plus they had a TON of land. Chuki would just run around with the other dogs all day. We didn´t have him on a leash at all. In fact, when we went to Cotopaxi we left him at the hostal with all of the other dogs.
All in all, it was a great trip for everyone. Pictures to follow.
Miss you all!
MULUB,
Taylor
