Weather in Ecuador sucks!!

After a Jacuzzy and a shower we have some downtime so I thought I´d catch up on the blog!


So yesterday was the first day of climbing and the first day of the 7 day program I signed up for. The first mountain was Pasochoa, which is a little over 14,000ft. So I woke up and it was raining, surprise surprise, I don´t think it stops here EVER! I went to front and waited around for breakfast to be served. I also got to meet my climbing partner. He is from France, but lives in New York now and has a lot of climbing experience in the ALPS and such. Pretty cool and even nicer that now I have someone to have conversation with instead of talking to myself this whole time. His name is Jean Nicolas, but thats way to long so I shortened it to JN. It works! I had a pancake the size of the plate and some fruit before Louis came to pick us up and take us the hour and a half to Pasochoa. The hike was pretty uneventful other than the fact the weather here is nuts!!! One minute its sunny, the next its pouring, then its cloudy, then its pouring, then its hailing, and then its pouring. Yeah and Im not joking about every 2 minutes either. Wish I would of brought some rain pants! Dang it! We scurried up Pasochoa in no time and well if you want to experience what i saw, go into a Steam Room. Becuase yea, it was super foggy and rainy. Though Pasochoa is an inactive Volcano and their is a huge crater, too bad we really couldn´t see it, we just knew not to fall into it.

When we got back to Papagayo, it was only 2, since we had done the hike so fast. So we had some cake and tea and then talked for a little bit before dinner. So the food here is interesting to say the least. They give us lunch each day, which consists of a banana, crackers, and two disgusting sandwiches. I´m not super picky but its bologny, cheese, and some wierd sauce of some sort...so glad i have my 6lb back of trail mix (more like 4 now!). Dinner I ordered a vegetable and chicken dish. It was good other than the raw eggs they put on it, I tried to eat around that as best I could.

This morning we were attempting Illiznas. Around 16,200ft foot peak and of course when I woke up it was raining! Seriously it doesn´t stop. Well we wanted to get an early start, but I think our guide was on his own time showing up a half an hour late. We got our gear since we needed boots, crampons, ice axe, and harnesses. Finally we were on our way as Pedro our guide wasn´t happy about how the weather was and that the chances of summitting was going to be slim to none. JN and I kept positive as we started the hike to the Refuge that was at around 15,500ft. After 2 anda half hours of pretty steep terrain, the weather basically raining, hailing, raining, cloudy, etc etc. We reached the Refuge where we got some tea and Pedro did a sun dance to try and amke the mad weather go away. After 30min and him telling us we have to go down we convinced him to take us higher. We started on some pretty tough terrain and it all of sudden became sunny! We made it up about 600ft from the summit when the sun turned to hail and rain. It is nuts how fast the clouds move here! So that is when he said we didn´t have a choice since there was lightening and we had to go down. Ahhh but we were so close, but its now are main climb and just an acclimization climb so it wasn´t that big of a deal. So Pedro took off and basically started running down the mountain after we got past the difficult rock part. Gees Ecuadorians are animals. Of course they didn´t have any boots my size so i had to get a size too big. Booo! I knew that was going to happen, even though they reassured me they had small sizes. Yeah right. So my feet were killing me! Though we eventually made it down when another storm was rolling in, oh yeah and it never stopped raining.

It was nice to get back. Tommorrow we have an ´off day´but we are going to go hiking or biking somwhere since its not good to just do nothing. Then we leave for Cotopaxi refuge the next day after. We will see what strange food I end up with tonight! I just hope for the rain to let up for maybe 15min and the clouds so i can actually see the beauty of this land. Hope all is well!