Cotopaxi - on top of the world

After almost two weeks in Ecuador, I had to head back to Quito. Since the Panamericana Highway in this area is also call the Route of the Volcanos, I had decided to visit one of them on the way, the volcano Cotopaxi. Therefore I left the bus from Baños at the highway exist going to the entrance of the Cotopaxi national park, where I was picked up by my guide for the tour. (Another German tourist also waited there, hoping to find a tour he can join, so he came with us as well.)

Cotopaxi is one of the highest active volcanos in the world, with over 5890 m. (But not as active the the volcano in Baños. The last erruption at Cotopaxi was about 100 years ago.) The entrance to the national park is at about 3000 m, and it is possible to get up to about 4600 m by car. The road is only a dirt road, with some quite had patches. Additionally, the snow starts at about 4200 m. From the end of the road, it about another 300 m in altitude to the base camp. From here, it seems to be possible to climb up the top in about 6 to 8 hours. (Usually the climbers would start around midnight, to get up the top around sunrise.)

I had only planned to get up to the base camp. However, since I had spent the last week in Baños with only about 2000 m altitude, I had to get up very slowly and carefully, not to get the altitude sickness.

Usually, before going up that high, you should aclimatise at around 3500 - 3800 m for a few days, and go up some smaller mountains for training. Since I mainly wanted to see the volcano, and hadn't planned any serious hiking or staying up there longer, it was acceptable not to have aclimatised before. If I had felt altitude sick, I just would have had to stop the trip and return further down. But I gave it a try, and, very slowly, climbed up the last 300 m. I did notice the effect of the height going further up. The hike was not really difficult (even for, you just had to look out a bit because of the snow), but I was out f breath quite quickly (as the air was a lot thinner), and at the end felt slightly light headed. But I also had a really good guide, who took me up thevreally slowly, making sure all the time that I was ok. And after about an hour, I had made it to the base camp, to 4864 m!

The weather was quite crazy this day. When starting in Baños in the morning, it was all covered in clouds, which came quite far down. Just as I was getting closer to Cotopaxi, the bottom clouds cleared up a bit, so I could see the whole volcano, up to the top. During the hike up, the clouds started closing in below us. From the base camp, I could therefore only image how the view from up there would be. Heading downwards, for a short moment, the sun actually came out (for some dice views and photos), before it then started snowing / raining ice on the last bit back down to the car. Heading further back  down with the car, the snow changed into rain. I then didn't really see much of the rest of the park, as it continued raining quite heavily for the rest of the day. I did, however, very shorts see some wild horses, a falcon and a fox.

In the end, I was brought back to the highway exist, from where I caught a bus to Quito. As I had gotten up really early, was going to get up really early again the next day, and as it was also raining in Quito, I just went into my hotel, and had a hot shower after all the snow on Cotopaxi.