South America

Oh well. New country and everything. Ecuador is chockingly different from Venezuela, for various reasons. Colder, of course, more organised, more tourists. The Spanish here is much easier to understand. And here are mountains!!!

We managed to arrive in Quito without any problems with the altitude (after all, not all people do). We took it easy, spent more than a week above 2500 meters, to adjust properly, before we went down south to experience some real mountains.

Ice axe, crampons and fleece underwear. We were going to climb Cotopaxi, a snowcovered volcano and Ecuadors second highest mountain... We started from the climber's refugio at 4800 meters, our guide woke us up at midnight to do the climb to the top, 5897 meters above sealevel...

Cotopaxi

My god, I have no idea why I even tried to do it! I mean, I was already feeling the altitude sickness at that height! And also, I don't like being cold!!! I like snow when it can be used for snowboarding, and that's about it. It might have been the simple fact that I had already paid for the climb. And, oh well, I tend to be a bit stubborn from time to time...

Climbing practice on the glacier. This is before I got ill...

First I felt fine. Made it up to the glacier entrance (5000 meters) and all. Dark, cold and most of all weird, to be... on top of the world! Because that is what it felt like. I guess that feeling kept me going. So we put on our crampons and started climbing the glacier. It's goddamn beautiful! White and clean and quiet, and huge. Thunderstorms at the horizon, a bit of snowfall where we were but the sky sparkling with stars still.

But what happened? After 200 meters or so I started feeling dizzy again. Rested for a while, kept on going... and then I puked on the glacier. And worst of all - the only thing I could think about was how nice and white and clean it was before that, and how I destroyed it all... I felt like an environmental disaster!!!

So, we had to go down again. I felt really really bad because Joakim (my boyfriend) had to go down too, and he felt just fine. But lucky for me, it turns out that all the groups have to go down, because the weather was getting worse. So it wasn't completely my fault that we didn't make it...

Down in Latacunga now, I feel fine. Though, I don't know if I'm up for any more mountains, at least not for a while...

//Susanna
(More Ecuadorian pics in my photo gallery!)