Sunday 4 March 2012

Anya woke up still not quite right, whilst Eva was worried about whether her left knee would be able to bear the hike plus she had started to get a bit congested. Bo was still off his food so it looked like only Gabriel and I were up for the hike to the bottom.

The sun wasn't out at the 7:30 am breakfast we had and it was very cold. After breakfast, both Eva and Bo decided to try and leave earlier than the camioneta we had booked for 12 pm, and to try to get back to La Hesperia earlier. Gabriel, Anya and I got agreement to leave our luggage in the common dining room and we set off (8:30) for the bottom. It was pretty slippery and steep in places, partly due to the sandy soil on the path which started off as steps. We were preceded down the steep slope by a guy virtually running down the path carrying a yellow sack of something down. Further down, we could see an indigena woman walking down and I wondered whether she was wearing normal shoes or not (we all had hiking shoes on). When we were almost to the bottom, I saw that she seemed to be harvesting something from a terraced part of the crater but could not tell what it was.

We managed to make it to the bottom of the crater in about 35 minutes, towards the place where you could see kayaks for hire up above. Both Anya and Gabriel opted to hire out a kayak for half an hour ($2.50 each). Afterwards, we climbed back up; the sun came out near the beginning and soon we were all stripping off layers, including me ditching my inner merino leggings. We were quite proud of ourselves to make it up in an hour, although it was tempting a couple of times to hire the mules that were being escorted down for those who didn't want to make the climb back up on their own two feet.

Back at the hostel, we asked if we could get an earlier camioneta than the one we had ordered and managed to get one for 11:20 which took us back to Zumbahua. There things slipped a little: all the buses to Latacunga were packed when they pulled into Zumbahua plus there were always a group of people waiting to board. There was also no space to put our luggage (and me with my large backpack and my daypack), so we weren't able to board until the third bus. Even then, we weren't able to stash our large luggage underneath, but we were lucky enough to be able to sit even though it was not in a chair with a seat back but merely a large padded area behind the driver.

After that, though, we were able to catch connections pretty quickly, making Latacunga for 2:15 pm; getting a bus to Aloag at 2:30 for 3:40-ish. We all bought a helado (ice cream) from a vendor who boarded the bus and it was here that Anya decided that it seemed to be definitely dairy that was causing her stomach cramps. Almost immediately after eating it, her cramps had intensified. Although I had asked the conductor to let us know when we reached Aloag, he didn't, however, another passenger gave us the nod when to get off and we managed to get to Aloag without any major problems (unlike the return from Baños weekend). We managed to find a bus waiting to go to Santo Domingo on the road, a good thing as it had started to rain, got on immediately and made it to La Hesperia for 5:30 pm. I'm glad to say that even with a three-quarters full backpack and a day pack, I still managed to make it up the steep path to the volunteer house in half an hour! I was, however, very hot, afterwards and even enjoyed my cold shower… I still felt very warm after the shower, in fact!