Cotopaxi Volcano

Cotopaxi is one one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and an hour or two south of Quito. Here in the National Park there is a big lagoon as well as the volcano itself where you can walk up to the base camp. I believe the base camp is just used for day visitors now as the climb to the summit is no longer allowed since the volcano is active.

The base camp is at 4800 metres, there is a road that leads almost up to the top, but it's short 200 metres in altitude. So the rest of the way is up hill walking. As you can see from the pictures, the volcano was covered in cloud the day we were there. Every now and then we would get a peek of the valley below. We started the hike up there, but I found the altitude hard, very hard. We were at a similar elevation in Bolivia, but perhaps it was because we climbed slowly to this height over a few days. But here we came straight from sea level and barely had time to adjust. Or, I'm simply unfit. Whatever it was, the moment it started raining I told Alex that I can't go any further and we went back down. I'll probably regret that decision but it was done. Instead we went to a local restaurant and looked over the volcano that conquered me and pretended we made it to the summit.Read more