andean warmth

It comes from the people, the burning fires and the sun.

where my heart lives

The first time I visited Cotopaxi, high in the Ecuadorian Andes, I was stunned. The magic lived on for me this summer. This is a place that calms me and energizes me a la vez. I wake up early and go to bed late. Days filled with hot tea, the smoky richness of wood burning fires, horseback rides through the páramo and majestic views in all directions. This is Cotopaxi. It gives me the feeling of home, and, when I think about my rural childhood, it's not that different. Take the flat canvas of my North Dakotan roots and give it peaks and valleys, throw in some Spanish and you might get Cotopaxi.

páramo by horseback

Páramo: A plant community of shrub heath, mosses, fern meadows and grasslands above tree line in the Andes of South America, according to Conservation International. We had the opportunity to explore the area on horseback for three hours. My horse had trouble galloping. Our guide Roberto told me it was because he had some El Paso Fino in him, which made it less of a natural movement for him. It's just as well, because no tuve prisa. I was in no hurry.

4810 meters

Cotopaxi


Looking down, a little more than halfway up


Looking straight up to the summit from the refuge

The hike was short but not easy. In the middle picture you can see white spots down the hill in the distance. These are the cars in the parking lot, where our trek began. We made it to Refugio Jose F. Ribas, all 26 of us. It looks so easy, until you start walking. The air is so thin, sometimes you must stop to breath. Everyone I saw coming down the volcano wore climbing boots and carried pick axes. We were a motley crew in tennis shoes, hoodies, alpaca hats and ponchos.

cotopaxi

One of the hardest parts of blogging about trips retrospectively is deciding where to start. I've decided to start with the part of the trip that was the most visually stimulating to me - Cotopaxi. Here we stayed at a lovely Hacienda called El Porvenir. To give you some sense of the trip, it went like this: Quito --> Mindo --> Cotopaxi --> Quito --> Isabela --> Santa Cruz --> San Cristóbal. --> Quito. Three of the stops were in the Galápagos Islands.

I did a fair amount of reading before the trip, but a majority of the research I did was on Las Encantadas and not the mainland. I was floored when we arrived at the hacienda. The bright white summit of Cotopaxi - the world's highest active volcano - peeked out behind the hills surrounding us. At night, the lights in Quito's valley twinkled. In the day, the sun's rays increased the intensity of the colors of man and land. The clouds touched the earth and piled on top of each other. The wind gave the land a constant voice.