...about 14,400 feet high to be exact. On April Fools Day (which is not celebrated here), we attempted to climb the closest mountain to us in Quito. The mountain is called Rucu Pinchincha. It is about 15,400 ft tall at the summit. To start the hike many people, including us, ride the teleferico to almost the top, about 13,450ft. The teleferico is a cable car that takes you from bottom to top in under 10 minutes. We planned to start the climb around 8am. Well, we arrived at the bottom of the teleferico to discover that it did not have any power at the top, but rest assured that the electric company had been called. We decided to wait it out. While waiting we met a really nice family from St. Augustine, Florida. They were in Quito for the week with their two young boys. I remember thinking that it was really cool that they took their kids to interesting places abroad instead of the usual Disney Land or Myrtle Beach. We ended up waiting around for about 3 hours. Then finally the line for buying tickets started to move and we were on our way up the mountain. At the top of the teleferico we took some pictures (one of a llama) and got a really nice view of Quito. It was hard to believe that even though we were seeing a hugh chunk of the city, it was not even close to seeing the whole thing.
Now the hike. We finally got on the trail around 12:30pm (a very late start). We climbed up and down the man and dirtbike make path. We reached the rock part about 2 hours later. From our view on the rocks we could see the ash slide (made from a past eruption). Unfortunately we could also see a gigantic storm moving in on us rather quickly. It started to hail lightly as we decided to turn around and forego our summit attempt. The hail steadily picked up both size and frequency. We happened upon an overhang with other hikers just as the hail got really bad. While waiting out the storm in the ¨cave¨ we got to see some really neat horizontal lightning and hear some close and very loud thunder. It took about 45 minutes for the storm to pass. We made our way back to the teleferico. I (Amber) fell more times than I care to remember on the slippery and muddy trail. My pants were about 5 pounds heavier at the end of the hike because of the mud.
We are looking forward to the next time that we can make this hike, and make it to the top : ) I have a few pictures of the hike on my facebook page...more to come when we make it to the top.
Interesting fact: Any bus in Qutio, and maybe even Ecuador, costs 25 cents per ride. No matter how long you ride or where you are going. We can literally get a bus from one end of the city to the other for 25 cents...and Qutio is 22 miles long. Pretty much the buses are always crowded...but it is totally worth it.
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