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From hot to cold, low to high, small and quiet to huge and noisy, we made our way to the capital of Ecuador. We arrived in Quito at around midnight after a 5 hour bus ride from Tena. The southern bus terminal in Quito called Quitumbre is quite impressive; upon arrival I thought we had somehow found ourselves at the airport. I had never before seen such a large and extravagant bus terminal. We caught a taxi to our hostel, Casa Bambu, for $8, yikes. Welcome to the big city. The ride to the terminal took more than 30 minutes, which explains the price. We got a dorm room with 5 beds for $10 each, though the room was empty so it was basically a private room. The next morning I ordered breakfast upstairs for $3.50. It's always a bummer when it's not included in the room price, but at least it was a good portion size and tasty. I met Harald at the table, a Dutch guy traveling by himself who had just arrived about 30 minutes after us the night before. He was just beginning his 6 week trip, and after chatting for a bit I invited him to check out the city with us. It was a Saturday so we set out to find tour agencies with whom Lauren and I could book a trip to the jungle and Harald could book a Galapagos tour. Unfortunately for us all the agencies were closed because it was some sort of national holiday. After a while we gave up on tour agencies and went to eat at a touristy restaurant called The Magic Bean. They had a huge menu with delicious food and various coffee drinks and smoothies, just what we needed. We hung around the city with Harald for the rest of the day doing basically nothing except figuring out how to navigate the city's bus system, which is always an adventure. Quito has a lot of large recreational park areas that are filled with trees and play equipment, and plenty of grass space on which to play fútbol. It's always nice to see a lot of green in the big cities, and this is the first capital where we've seen this much open green space. Harald became our companion for the next few days, and we went to eat at The Magic Bean every single day because we couldn't really find anywhere else with a lot of vegetarian options. I learned a lot about the Netherlands through my various conversations with Harald and it was all quite interesting. It's a country that is just as confusing at the entirety of the United Kingdom. Fun fact for the day: Holland is not actually a country, but comprises only 2 of the 12 provinces (North Holland and South Holland) within the Netherlands, which is the whole country. Therefore when people speak of Holland they are really only talking about part of a country, though it is the most populated part and contains Amsterdam and The Hague. The more you know. Learning about different countries is fun.
On Sunday all the tour agencies were still closed, which is normal for a Sunday, so we decided to visit the Vivarium located in one of Quito's largest parks. It was filled with local snakes and frogs, and they also had some turtles and caimans. It was neat to look at the animals, though it is always sad to see so many beautiful creatures enclosed in small tanks. Afterwards we set out to explore Old Town Quito, which is where most of the churches and museums are located. It is the part of Quito with the most historic buildings and Spanish influence, hence the name 'Old Town.' It was nice and the buildings were beautiful, but Lauren doesn't have the slightest interest in churches or aimless wandering so we didn't spend too long there. We did poke our head into one of the churches just to see the large amounts of gold that coat the entire altar and many pillars; it was cool to see the original church design still intact with so much real gold.
On Monday we finally were able to book our tours. We found a travel agent near our usual lunch spot named Luis Tipan. He had cheap prices posted outside so we decided to pop in, and thanks to his friendly outgoing personality and laid back demeanor both Harald and ourselves decided to book our tours with him. He also had the cheapest prices of everyone we had talked to, so that didn't hurt. We found a 5-day tour to the Cuyabeno Reserve for $260 that left on Thursday, meaning we would have a couple more days in Quito. It was longer than we would have liked but we were excited about our jungle excursion so it was alright.
The next day Harald and I decided to ride the Teleférico, the gondola system that transports passengers to one of the mountains that towers over Quito. The top station sits at an elevation of 4,700 meters or something like that; nice and high regardless. The view from the top of the gondola was incredible; the city seemed to stretch out below for miles and miles like a never ending sea of miniature Legos. There is a trail at the top that continues up a jagged peak, the summit of which sits around 5,000 meters. We started along the trail and climbed a couple of the steep humps, but it was late afternoon and freezing, and the clouds were starting to roll in. It would have been cool to climb to the very top, but the view would have been obscured by the clouds and neither of us had any desire to be caught in one of the frequent hailstorms that occur up there. We headed down after about an hour of walking, and shared a gondola with a Danish girl and an American guy that were traveling together for a bit. They were cool, we chatted about our travels for awhile and I came to find out that the girl was going to be staying at the same lodge as us in Cuyabeno, only she would be arriving 2 days later than us. Small world indeed. We parted ways with them at the bottom of the hill, and then Harald and I grabbed a quick bite before heading back to the hostel. We made plans to meet super early in the morning to travel to Cotopaxi volcano, about an hour south of Quito.
Lauren and I awoke at 5 the next morning, though we refused to get up because we were sure that Harald wouldn't be awake. A little before 6 we heard a knock at the door and there he was, all ready to go. We sprung into action and got ready in 10 minutes, then headed out to catch a bus to Terminal Quitumbre, the South Terminal in Quito. Harald had brought his new friend Wes along, an American guy that has basically been traveling for years and is now spending some time in South America. He was great company and it was nice to have other companions for the day. At the terminal we found a bus going south to Latacunga that would drop us off at the main entrance to Cotopaxi National Park. There we found plenty of guys waiting with their pickup trucks that offered their guide services for a day. Since we only had 4 people we only paid $20 each, including the $10 park entrance fee. Our guide was a nice guy who has been a guide in the park for almost 20 years. He only spoke Spanish, which was alright with us because we all understood him perfectly fine and I was more or less able to converse with him from the front seat. He pointed out the different species of pines and we talked about the various animals that lived in the park. We visited a beautiful little lake before heading up to the base of the volcano, at which point it began to rain. We didn't have a clear view of the summit because there were many low clouds and it was half raining, half snowing, so we were essentially hiking in a white out. Luckily there were many other groups there so we simply followed the stream of people up to the refuge. The hike was fairly difficult, mostly due to the altitude, but it was also pretty steep. We made it up to the refuge after about 30 minutes, which isn't too bad considering we were told it would take 45. They are currently doing construction at the refuge camp so we weren't able to warm up with a hot cup of coffee or anything, but they had a small fire outside where we were able to at least thaw out our hands. I was wearing many layers including leggings under my hiking pants, a fleece headband and gloves, and it was still freezing cold. After resting for a minute or 2 and taking pictures with the elevation sign to commemorate our accomplishment, we pushed further up the mountain to the highest point one can hike to without needing technical climbing equipment. It was another 20 minutes to the bottom of the massive permanent glacier that clings to the top of Cotopaxi, and there we found ourselves at an elevation of 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) which is officially the highest I have ever climbed to. Cotopaxi is the second highest active volcano in the world. We took some pictures with the glacier and then headed down, as it was absolutely freezing up there. Lauren and I practically ran down the mountain because it was fun, so we beat the boys by a good 20 minutes or so. Our guide was waiting there with the truck to take us back through the park to the highway. We never did catch a view of the summit or the entire volcano, which is supposed to be picturesque and amazing on a clear day. Kind of a bummer that the weather didn't work out in our favor, but I'm still really glad we went. We only had to wait by the side of the road for a minute or so before a bus heading to Quito stopped to pick us up. The ride to Quito cost $1.50 and before we knew it we were back at the terminal. We were famished from the climb so we found lunch at a cheap vegetarian place and then said goodbye to the boys. Lauren and I are heading to Lago Agrio on a bus tonight, where we will begin our Cuyabeno experience in the morning. Jungle here we come!
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