From Green to White

Cotapaxi
The top is missing
Llama
Extended views
I made it!
Back to Quito for my last luxurious night in a posh hotel, some serious unpacking and repacking to leave my dive stuff and any surplus to requiments items behind in Quito, a great meal out with my jungle buddies and some sad farewells and I am back in travel mode and back to the buses. Heading south again, with a rough idea of my travel plans but with no fixed itinary, I land in Latacunga, still high in the Andes, and am booked into a hostal for a few nights to explore the local area. First trip is to Cotapaxi National Park and to see the snow capped volcano, reaching 6000+ metres. The tour took me into the park and a walk around the lake followed by a very bumpy drive up to car park based well below the snow line of the volcano and what seemed like a short distance from the refuge centre. Along the drive there were wild horses, I saw the condor, llamas and further up the mountain a wolf (or maybe a fox). The short distance to the refuge centre grew and grew as I climb the very steep path up the mountain and struggled to catch my breath as walking to 4600m is quite tough, especially when you are fighting to keep your breakfast down - not sure if that was due to the altitude or my malaria tablets (no there are no mosquitos at this height but I´ve just come out of the jungle remember). The views through the park and along the walk to the refuge centre were spectacular but were soon obscured as the clouds came in very quickly, but disappeared as fast as well. As I reached the refuge centre and the snow line of the mountain it started to snow, more of a sleet, but how amazing, in one week and in one country I have gone from sea and beach to rainforest and was now stood in the snow and able to make snow balls and see a glacier. The cloud and the rain settled in for the walk down but what took nearly an hour to walk up only took about 15 minutes to walk down.