Acclimatization

     When we left off, on this blog anyway, we were working through expected difficulties fitting in and navigating language barriers.  All of us were a bit slumped, in a bit of a hole.  Since then we’ve slowly but surely been building an earthen staircase out of these holes and climbing back up into the sunshine.

    For one, the weather has changed.  For a solid 2 months it rained every afternoon.  Thunder announced three o’clock as reliably as the bells of a church.  Sam’s soccer is in the afternoons in an open field.  His commute to the fields on the hill above our house almost always involved getting very wet either while waiting for the bus on the way up, the way down, or while practicing with his team.  Someone always made the joke when we heard the first thunder rumbling through Cuenca, “Sam, I think it’s time for soccer!” 

    But gradually afternoons have dried and we’re now more confident leaving the house without umbrellas.  In the rainy months the river across the street swelled to a brown and white water torrent.  Now the river is a shriveled brook, shallow, calm, and shiny blue.

Raging Yanuncay

calm Yanuncay

    With in-person school in session, those first months were about routine.  We have a good rhythm walking Robin up the hill to her school.  We like to check out the cow who commutes to and from her pasture in the lot next to our housing compound.  We’ve nicknamed her “Serena” and have been impressed as she’s worked her way through the 50 yard by 50 yard patch of tall grass over the last few months.  We pass the sweet black dogs.  They come and lick our hands while we scratch their chins.  They had puppies that we’ve been watching grow.  There’s an empty lot that someone got into with a hoe and some seeds sometime in September.  As the months carried on those seeds turned into large heads of cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, and fully grown chard.  We know to cross the street before the scary barking dogs.  We then walk around the brown furry dog that lays on the sidewalk in front of the body shop.  The pit bull that is sometimes out when we take a left onto the dirt road seems scary but never does anything.  Up the hill, a yard has ducks, geese, chickens, and turkeys roaming around.  One day walking to pick Robin up in the afternoon, I discovered that past the bird specialists, new lambs had been born.  Their moms had full utters, and we enjoyed watching them all play as we passed to and fro day in and day out. 

The friendly black dogs

The house with all the birds

Just one lamb out today

    Locke and Sam know all the bus stops and times.  Locke likes saying, “Lavadora Clean Car” along with the female voice that comes on over the bus’s speaker.  We get off about a block above their school and walk by a gated driveway where a german shepherd and a basset hound lounge around.  The german shepherd barks at us but the basset hound just sticks his droopy face through the metal slats of the gate.  We joked one day that the one wants us to leave but the basset is just hoping that we give him a pork chop.  Now his name is “pork chop.”

Pork chop

    School, Spanish, piano, guitar, soccer, climbing, gymnastics all had a schedule for us to keep, so we kept it.  But we also had a plan to meet our friends the Harveys over winter break.  After a million quite impressive Spanish-only phone calls, Suz made a killer plan.

The Coast

    We meet the Harveys in Olon near Montanita and surf and swim and boogie-board in the warm waves for a few days.  

Playa Curia, our first stop just north of Olon

Montanita

    Then we go to Machalilla north of Puerto Lopez where we go to more beaches, Isla de la Plata for snorkeling and blue-footed boobies, and an indigenous community, Agua Blanca, where we eat really tough goat and swim in a tepid, sulfur spring because the locals told us it would make our skin feel like the “nalgas de bebé” (butt cheeks of a baby). 

Playa Los Frailes

Playa los frailes

Los frailes

Isla de la Plata, Our Crew!

Isla de la Plata, Blue-footed Boobies

Agua Blanca spring

The Van ride

    Then on a cloudless day at sea level on the equator, we pack into a van with large windows that only open a crack and broken air conditioning.  The heat is relentless for most of the day as we endlessly wind through banana plantation after cacao farm and rows and rows of palm oil trees up to 13,000 ft.  

Don’t let our smiles fool you, this was rough!

    After nearly ten hours, we arrive at Isinlivi with the sun low in the sky. We’ve transported to a different world, one with thin, cool air, and greens of all shades.  It’s a world of quilted farms and pastures patched into the impossibly steep slopes of giant, smooth mountains.  We joke that this swanky hostel perched on terraces called Lulu Llama Lodge is a little bit like Xanadu.

Scene from the roof of the Llullu Llama (which means baby llama in Kichwa)

View from our terrace, such a nice welcome!

Christmas

    We spend Christmas here.   We go up to the field just past the metal-covered concrete soccer court where the people of Isinlivi gathered to listen to their band of drums and horns and to eat and light off fireworks.  We want to play soccer in the field but all the trash on the field gets us down.  Suzie buys a couple of trash bags and we leave the field looking quite nice.  After a winded high-altitude soccer session, we sit on wooden benches around a central wood round.  We talk to a family who has come into town for the festivities.  The man does most of the talking.   The woman is shy.  We compliment her black hat with the peacock feather in it, and this makes her smile.  They seem dressed up for the occasion with neatly pressed pant-legs on the man and a nice skirt on the woman.  They talk about potato farming and then start talking about guinea pigs (cuy) because they wonder if we have ever tried it. The woman puts a bowl of boiled potatoes from their own harvest on the wood round between us and motions for us to take some.  Then she reaches under a checkered hand towel and pulls out pieces of battered and deep-fried cuy that taste just as good as any other battered and deep fried meat.  Two bands play all day, from about 10 until 9.  One plays on top of a hill just out of town and the other in the town center.  We are a little worried that the merry making would go on through the night, but it stops at 9 sharp.

Merry Christmas!!

Beautiful children of Isinlivi dressed up for the Christmas festivities

Christmas festivities

Robin tries to feed a llama

The Quilotoa Trek

    We ride up to our trekking start in an open-air “Chiva” which looks like this:

Riding in style on the Chiva

Nice views from the Chiva, the mountains in the distance are the Ilinizas

    We start off on our trek which takes us around the rim of the crater where we enjoy great views of the green lake in the center.  We choose the “Sendero extremo” (the extreme trail) which takes us on very steep single track down the walls of a canyon over a fairly exposed washed-out section before dumping us onto a shelf on the other side of a river. 

Beautiful Quilotoa crater lake at 12,800ft. Seen here with Chuquisaca flowers.

Pretty cold up there!

Of course, the kids are never cold!

The verdant hills give way to a deep canyon

Robin leads the decent through deep canyon walls

    The next day is a glorious seven mile trail that goes down and across a river and then climbs up the other side to eventually wind itself back to Isinlivi.  The vistas are magical.  Valleys and towns and groves of Eucalyptus (Robin pronounces this Eucalipstick).  Farms and bridges and flowers.  So verdant.  We pass a bull who then wanders up the trail after us.  We try to give banana peels to a couple llamas that we pass because we were told that they love them but they’re not interested in the slightest.

Verdant valleys

Beautiful pastures

Quick break for Rubik’s cube solving

Cotopaxi

Cotopaxi from our hostel

    Sam, Brett, and I have the plan to summit a volcano named Cotopaxi which is 5897 meters (19347ft) tall. With our hired guides and borrowed climbing equipment we leave the hostel at 11pm and drive to the Cotopaxi parking lot (15,200 ft.) which is where we start our climb.  The path is sort of loose and a little steep, but at a slow pace, it takes about about an hour and a half to pass the refugio and reach the glacier where we rope up.  I’m in the back of a team of three with Sam in the middle and the guide up front.  Brett and the second guide are a team behind us. It feels wonderful to be back on snow.  I didn’t think I was missing winter very much but the crunch of the snow under my feet and the cold wind on my face and in my lungs is delicious.  There are a bunch of other teams also trying to reach the summit by sunrise so it’s a headlamp light saber battle up and down the trail.  Our guide knows the splits well and calculates that we’re walking much faster than he expected.  I was afraid of this.  The climb will be 4000 vertical ft., and all three of us are quite used to outings of that magnitude.  We’re also used to more challenging terrain.  This trail is steep but not at all so steep that it’s scary.  It’s only 4:30 when we’re 45 minutes from the summit so we’re slated to arrive at the top well before sunrise.  We walk and stop, walk and stop, etc for quite a while trying to stretch time.  Around 5:15 we reach the crater, stop in a place sheltered from the wind about 20 vertical feet from the summit. We wait and watch the sulfurous steam curl from the cone in the ghoulish blue light of dawn. 

Looking down into the crater before dawn

    Sam then says that he can’t get himself up to the top.  This is preposterous because getting to the top involves walking up the equivalent of two flights of stairs.  He says that he’s just too sleepy.  It’s true that his eyes seem to be closing involuntarily.  He’s nodding off while standing on an icy incline at 10 degrees Fahrenheit.  But the guide cracks the whip one last time and we push up to the summit.  

On the summit!

    Hattie Harvey has a dream at 5:30 from the hostel we can see from the summit.   In the dream, she sees the three of us on the peak.  At this moment we are, in fact, standing on the summit in the cold waiting for the sun to rise. We’re lucky.  It’s perfectly clear this morning and that’s rare.  From the top is a panorama of Ecuador’s volcanos.  We’re the first ones up there followed closely by a team of Russian climbers.  The sun is red on the horizon when we start down. 

    It’s day now and bright white with the sun reflecting off of the glacier.  The ice has buckled and cracked into ship sized uplifts with giant icicles hanging down.  It’s like an ice sculpture park plopped down on a steep snowy meadow.  We crunch down happily in our crampons and sunglasses.

Papallacta

We whirlwind to a place called Papallacta, a swanky hot spring at the base of a different volcano, Antisana. We stay in a cabaña with access to three hot spring fed pools to soak in.  This is the last day of our trip and we take the time to bask in the memories we just made.  

Intermission

    This is the part where I’m supposed to say that we came back to our house and worked our way back into a routine.  That’s not at all what happened.  Omicron is hitting Ecuador.  People are spooked.  After school on their first day back, Robin and Locke report that half of their class is not at school, and Sam is one of five students who show up.  Then their school goes completely virtual. Due to the language barrier and internet unreliability, virtual school is very frustrating and not very fruitful for us, so we decide to use this as a chance to explore El Altar (another volcano) and to visit Chimborazo (the highest mountain in Ecuador at 6310meters (20,702ft)).  So Suzie’s on the computer and after a few all Spanish conversations we’re set for a trip up to Riobamba to set up a base camp for our next adventure.

Our First Rodeo

Heading up the muddy trail

Sam gets to know”Mora”

    The hike into El Altar and its famous Laguna Amarilla is 11 miles, a lot of vertical, and is infamously muddy, so we decide to go on horseback. The horses make short work of what would take us forever to hike, but then the trail gets steep, rocky, and muddy.  It’s a hot day and our horses are drenched in sweat. Robin gives us a running commentary on what is happening with all of the horses’ waste elimination.  It’s tricky, but we’re doing okay until Robin’s horse decides to lay down and roll around in the dust.  She manages to hop off before it rolls on to her but this scares her and she starts crying.  After some hemming and hawing, we decide to give them (the horses and guides) another chance and successfully clip clop our way for a couple more hours to the campsite at the base of the climb to El Altar.

Robin got “ponied” part of the way

Approaching camp

    We’re lucky again.  Often pictures of trips to El Altar are grey and gloomy but this day is beautiful.  We can see the whole rim of the cirque.  This was once a super volcano likely larger than Chimborazo, but it exploded its side off at some unknown time in the past.  Robin, Suzie, and I climb up to the cirque in the sunshine while the boys focus on their Parkour. 

Hiking up to the laguna amarilla

The laguna amarilla (yellow lagoon), which was really turquoise, but at times supposedly appears yellow

Looking back down valley from the crater

Gorgeous evening and it was a COLD night!

Beautiful evening in camp

Kids at the base of El Obispo, one of the seven peaks of El Altar

The next morning in camp

Locke LOVED the horses

Setting off the next morning

    The next day Robin is upset about her sore butt, but the guide misinterprets her cries as fear and keeps repeating, “No pasa nada, Robin.  Tranquila.”  Now we have to cover the same technical steep sections but steep down not up.  Some of the drops are a few feet, and the horses must drop down with their front legs and almost jump with their back legs.  The horn on the front of the saddle comes in very handy for staying on the horse when it does this.  We pick our way through a lot of short steep sections but then come to a longer one.  Robin’s horse either bucks or jumps and sends her flying off of the saddle.  She somersaults down our of her saddle and drops to the ground, narrowly missing a rock. She then shimmies out from under the horse. I don’t see this, I just hear Suzie scream.  I see two riderless horses come down the hill to where the rest of us are waiting.  A few minutes later a rattled Suzie and Robin make it down to us. Robin is covered in mud and quite upset.

“No pasa nada,” our guide says, “tranquila.” 

“Ya pasó” Suzie says (it already happened).  

    We talk about walking.  We’re already halfway out, and the trail is all downhill.  “It’s too far,” they say, “You need to get back on the horses. There isn’t another option.”

    Robin makes it very clear she doesn’t want to get back on the horse, and we don’t want her to either.  The guides are both talking at the same time and every word out of their mouth is an attempt to pressure us to get back on the horses.  We filter out their pleas like background noise in a restaurant and take a family survey.  Suzie and Robin want to walk.  Then Sam gets off his horse and says he wants to walk.  Then Locke follows suit.  

“No.” one of the guides says, “Está lejos.” (It’s far) 

“Podemos caminar lejos,” I say.  (We can walk far).  I get off of my horse.

    We pay the guides what we owe and ask them to drop our stuff at the restaurant at the bottom of the trail.  They move their horse train down the trail leaving us as a family standing on our own ten feet.  It’s quiet, as if someone just turned off an annoying radio station.  We see the horses curl around the trail in the distance.  I breath in a deep breath of the thin warm air and can’t wait to amble down this beautiful trail with the people I love.

Chimborazo

    Chimborazo is out the day we tour it. The air on the trail at 16,000 ft is a bit thin but doesn’t stop the kids from running up and over the hills.  They’re psyched to be on snow again.  There’s a thin layer of new snow on top of corn which makes for some fun impromptu glacading and a nice jog downhill.  Our guide grew up in an indigenous family outside of Riobamba and explains to us many of their beliefs.  One is that they call the mountain Taita which means father in Kichwa.  He says that good conditions on the mountain are not luck but a result of respect on the part of the visitor, that you must ask permission to approach it and Taita decides how he will reveal himself.  He opens up to us this day.  I marvel at the scale of the massive slopes which support the mountain.  Miles and miles of a Kodachrome gradient of browns and grays stretch into red and yellow and then roll into green at the base.  We’re 5000 ft below the peak but can see what looks like miles of mountain below us.  More than just shoulders, we can see arms and a large full chest.

Home

    Now is the part where we come home and get back into a routine.  This time we embark on a combination home-school and virtual learning program.  It feels good to be back in our own space and we’ve got a good thing going.  But… only for two weeks because we got news of a last minute Galapagos tour. If (fingers crossed) everything works out, next up:

The Galapagos.