Pichincha Hike

So as you know we're training to climb Cotopaxi in a couple of weeks. We've been running sprints for two weeks now and yesterday was the first training climb. We climbed Pichincha. Pichincha is the volcano straight to the west of Quito. We see it every day. I love this volcano. It's the one I've been taking photos of (although I'm seriously behind on this project).

Sebas is organizing the whole thing. We just show up where and when he tells us, ready to climb. Yesterday we were to be in Plaza d'Argentina at 8:15am. Our hiking group was Sebas, us, and Edgar and his son Daniel. Edgar is the pro. He's climbed all but two volcanoes and mountains in Ecuador. ALL BUT TWO! Holy Mackerel! He's summited Cotopaxi 10 times and he's summited Chimborazo, the biggest mountain in the world, twice. His son Daniel is 12 and a trooper.

Pichincha at 8:00 in the morning while we were walking to the Plaza to meet Sebas.

We drove to the Telefirico, took it up part of the mountain and then hiked from there.

Ryan and me at the TeleferiQo lookout

Quito from the TeleferiQo lookout

The hike took us about 3 hours up and 1.5 hours down, I think. For the most part it's just a nice hike. Mostly uphill, but nothing too steep, nothing too strenuous. The last hour is the most difficult. There's about 30 minutes of hiking uphill in volcanic ash, which is a pain in the butt because for every step you take uphill you slide a little back downhill. It's just really slippery and you have to be sure of your footing and you have to just move fast. Then the last 30 minutes was an actual climb. Not a technical climb, there were no ropes and harnesses. But you're climbing over rock faces and you have to be careful of where you put your hands and feet or else you would seriously die. I found that part a little bit scary but mostly exhilarating. It's pretty stinking amazing to think of what your body is capable of doing.

Pichincha from the trail

The volcanic ash part

The ridge that we had to climb over

Sebas climbing

We summited and ate lunch. The summit is 4696 meters. Which means we only climbed around 500  meters from the TeleferiQo. And we were about 1800 meters from Quito.

The group at the summit!

The way down is always a million times worse for me. I much prefer going up than going down. I prefer my hamstrings to burn than my quads. Plus I feel much more in control going up. Going down you have to work with gravity and just go for it. Way scarier, I think!

The craziest part about the hike was the change in weather. When we started it was nice, sunny and warm. By the time we got to the top the fog was so thick you couldn't see anything. On the way down we had rain and hail. And then when we got back home to the apartment it was sunny.

One of the hailstones during the hail storm. 

We're feeling good! The plan is Illinizas next Saturday at 6am. Then maybe Cayambe and then maybe Cotopaxi. We're not quite sure. If we add one more mountain, which sounds like we will, then we'll probably have to rearrange the jungle trip. We're thinking we might be done teaching on Monday instead of Wednesday and then go during the week. Who knows? We'll figure it out as we go!

If there's one thing I love, it's being on top of a mountain! And I'm so happy that Ryan loves it too! (This was his first time!)

MULUB,
Taylor

Dog's Intuition?!

At around 2:00 am last night Chuki ran into our room doing this low bark. It's the bark he does when we pretend to be dogs and he runs from room to room trying to find the other dogs. I like to think of it as his alerting bark. It's not an aggressive bark, it's a 'something isn't right' bark. He was running from the window in our bedroom to the window in the 'spare bedroom' doing the bark. Both windows face the same intersection. At first Ryan and I were alarmed, I thought someone was in the apartment or there was something climbing the outside of the building superman style. But we checked and everything was fine in the apartment. We looked out the window and there was a cab (we think it was a cab) stopped in the street. There were 3 guys that we're apparently in the cab out in the street kind of racing around frantically. And a couple of minutes later an ambulance pulled up. The paramedic got a guy out from the back seat of the cab on a stretcher. Put him in the ambulance and, what we can only imagine, worked on him in the ambulance. All the while, the friends, or at least we think they were his friends?!, pacing around in the street.

At one point the lights went on in another apartment with a crazy black lab and they (owner and dog) came out onto their terrace to check everything out. I can only assume that their dog had woken everyone up as well.

About an hour went by (at least that's what it felt like) and finally the ambulance was gone, the cab had left and everything was back to normal. Chuki stayed on alert the whole time. At one point a guard from one of the buildings nearby came out to look at what was going on and Chuki did the same low bark thing.

It is just really crazy to me that even before the ambulance was there Chuki was up and alerting us. How do they know that? And what did he know? Did he just think why is this car stopped in the middle of the street and why are these people walking around it? Had another dog barked in the same way and he heard it? Or could he sense their fear from all the way up here? Who knows! All that I do know is that he was very concerned. Hopefully because he was up for a good 2 hours during the middle of the night, he'll sleep extra long this morning!

I've heard of women's intuition, but dog's intuition? So crazy!!

Project Number 2 - Day 23 (Thursday)

Today there was a late breakfast but I had my trusty standby, yogurt, granola and 1/2 a banana. Plus coffee. I'm trying to cut back to 1-1.5 cups in the morning to see if that helps my head. We'll see. I think Ryan is right, I think a lot of my headaches have to do with the mattress we've been sleeping on for a year and the pillows we've been using. I can't wait to get home to my BeautyRest mattress and my memory foam pillow! Seriously, I can't wait!

I had a weird schedule today which caused me to race home after class and go for a run with Ryan and then race back for another class. Which left little time for lunch. I actually wasn't very hungry. I know some people never like to eat after they run. For me it depends. I can never predict whether I'll be super hungry or not hungry at all. I think because of the late breakfast, I just wasn't that hungry. I grabbed a teeny tiny sandwich while I waited for the bus, plus a carbonated water. I also ate 1/2 a bag of papas. Which was able to hold me over until dinner.

We had a party to go to on Thursday night, a chocolate party. And so in preparation for the chocolate party, I made cookies. They were to die for. Seriously, so good that I'm including a link to the recipe. I only made one change because we didn't have 3 cups of oatmeal. I used 1.5 cups of oatmeal and 2.5 cups of flour. The only things I would recommend are: use fresh coconut shavings it you can, use a good chocolate, and don't over bake! MMMMM. These were dinner, with a glass of milk.

When we got to the chocolate party, there wasn't any chocolate left! I guess that's what happens when you're almost 2 hours late! Oh well! I had a beer and a pina colada. Then we came home and hit the hay!

Project Number 2 - Day 24 (Friday)

Friday we went for round two at the visa office. I'm happy to report that we're 99% sure that everything is in order! I can only say 100% sure when we have our passports in our hands with the visa stamps in them, but that should be on Monday or Tuesday! I'll let you know. Ryan and I decided that we were more exhausted after waiting at the visa office than after climbing Pichincha. It's just so exhausting.

For breakfast on Friday, I'm embarrassed to say that I had cookies, plural, yes much of my diet on Friday consisted of cookies. See, remember those cookies I made on Thursday night? They were delicious! Seriously soo good! I put them in my backpack when I left for class at 6:50am Friday morning and Ryan and I continued to snack on them ALL DAY! So cookies for breakfast, along with a coffee and milk at class.

Lunch - more cookies. We took Chuki to the park and then came home and took a long nap (read: we watched a lot of LOST).

Dinner - We didn't have cookies, we had soup and rice. We figured we should eat something hearty because we were climbing Pichincha the next morning. So we added rice to the soup! I don't know if anyone else considers that hearty, but we did.

Dinner was followed by more LOST and then an early bedtime!

Project Number 2 - Day 25 (Saturday)

Yesterday was the much anticipated Pichincha climb. It went really well and it was a lot of fun. Ryan and I both felt like it was enjoyable and definitely not the hardest thing we'd ever done. So we're feeling confident that we'll have the energy and stamina for the next couple of weeks of mountain climbing.

What do you eat when you climb a mountain? Well let me tell you what we ate...

Breakfast - coffee (for me) and yogurt with granola and a 1/2 of a banana

On the trail - lots and lots of water (so much so that I had to pee twice while hiking!), a banana, abas (these nut/bean things), and bread (mine had peanut butter and jelly and Ryan's had butter). Plus we shared some chifles with our hiking partners.

Snack after the hike - cookies! Not even whole cookies, just the crumbs of the ones that fell apart!

Dinner - Pizza! We were all cozy watching LOST and didn't want to bother cooking so we ordered in! We haven't done that in ages! We got two pizzas: tomato, cheese, and roasted red peppers AND tomato, cheese, and tuna. The place we order from makes them more like flat breads and more pizzas. Hence the need for two! But they were delicious and much better than our other alternative, soup.

MULUB,
Taylor

Chuki's Dry Skin Remedy

So we got a lot of suggestions to try adding olive oil to Chuki's food in order to help with his dry skin. I did some research on my own and found that there are a lot of home remedies out there. Like I said, we've tried the oatmeal bath and it helps but only for the day that we give it to him. Plus it's not good to bathe a dog too frequently because it dries out their skin. So we can't continue to do that as a permanent fix.

My hesitation with olive oil is two fold. A) It's expensive. We don't even buy it for ourselves. When my parents were here they bought us a jar of olive oil and that's the only time we've ever had it in the house. We use sunflower oil instead because it's much cheaper. B) Because we cook for Chuki he gets a lot of oil already in the beef that he eats. We add sunflower oil to the beef when we cook it and it has a high fat content (16-17%). So he's getting a lot of natural oil from the beef.

So what we're trying now is a combination of sunflower oil and cod liver oil drizzled over his food. The cod liver oil was one of the home remedies that I read about. We started the treatment on Friday night, so hopefully in a week we'll have at least some results! We'll let you know!

MULUB,
Taylor