Hotel Coraza, Otavalo, 9:15 pm
Up at 6:35 am and ready by 7:00 am. Walked in the neighborhood waiting for Safari our travel agent's car to pick us up to see the volcanoes. It was a nice morning in Quito.
Safari was 45 minutes late. Rommel is our guide, a short, smart looking guy from Cuenca. He is a 3rd year university student of touristry and his brother is a mountain guide. Rommel's English is not bad. Today we had a Land Rover. There was another traveler Cindy in the jeep. Cindy looked my age and worked in a finace firm in New York City. I thought she was an American born Chinese.
We drove around Quito to pick up food of the day and then left town, going north. On the way we stopped for gas and bread in the town Guayllabamba. I was already tired.
Rommel and the Safari Land Rover. We stopped to get gas. There was a guy with machine gun at the gas station.
我们的吉普车在加油站。居然见到有个持枪的人。
The Panamerican Highway is a very nice highway, but the cars aren't always following the lanes. Our 4WD was quite slow. We followed a truck full of bananas for a long time, and then we followed a beat-up red cross truck. There were many indigene people standing or sitting on the roadside gesturing the passing cars for money or something. These "beggers" were usually little kids of 5-8 years old. I felt really bad for them. How could they think that cars would stop on the highway to give them any money! Rommel later explained to me that this only happened around Christmas time. These indigenous people were only asking for "Christmas gift" which was just food, because they thought it was the Christmas spirit for the Christian traditions.
A rest stop by the Panamerican Highway overseeing the beautiful valley.
泛美公路的景色。
A beat-up Red Cross truck on Panamerican Highway. There were always people on the side of the highway.
高速公路上的红十字会卡车。路边经常有人在走，也有人讨钱讨饭。
We crossed the equator! There was a monument on the roadside. This monument was much less visited than the popular Mitad del Mundo moument north of Quito, and consisted of a large concrete globe, and a line on the ground marking the division of the northern and southern hemisphere. I did what everyone would do here--standing on both hemispheres cross the equator.
The equator!
站在赤道两边！
The road to Cayambe Volcano was closed so we had to take small roads through remote villages. Rommel had to stop and asked for directions several times. The roads were very bad. I was glad we had a 4WD. Eventually we entered the Ecological Reserve. The landscape of the Cayambe Valley below was breathtaking--green fields on rolling volcanic hills, big blue sky, puffy white clouds, cows, houses, people in their traditional cloth doing their traditional things, the same things they had been doing for hundreds of years. I fell in love.
The "paved" road passing through a small village.
上山的路，穿过小村庄。
A fruit hut in a village on the way up to the Reserva Ecologica Cayambe-Coca.
山村里的水果摊子。
Rose farm on the hillside. This area grow roses for export.
山边的玫瑰农场。这里的玫瑰出口的。
Reserva Ecologica Cayambe-Coca.
Our jeep went up and up and up and finally arrived at the climbing refuge. This was a building, 4600 meter they say, in the mountain for the mountaineering people to rest. This was the highest point I had ever set foot on in my life. From there we "hiked" or climbed around the refuge for about an hour to look at the glacier. I had never seen glaciers before and was stuck by the sight. Truly impressive! I wanted to go further but my companions was feeling the altitude and wanted to go down. I just climbed around the rocks and looked at the glaciers in the dense fog.
Finally, glacier! Near the refuge of Volcan Cayambe.
冰川！火山！赤道！
Volcan Cayambe glacier.
冰川！
Volcan Cayambe is an extinct vocalno. At 5790 meters, it is Ecuador's 3rd highest peak. This is the HIGHEST POINT in the world through which the equator directly passes--at about 4600 meters on the south side. When I thought about how the equator is bulged, I realized that we were actually standing at the furthest point away from the center of the earth!!!
Plants at 4600 meters on Volcan Cayambe.
高山上的植物。
Flowers at 4600 meters on Volcan Cayambe.
４６００米火山上的小花。
Galcier at equator. Volcan Cayambe, Ecuador.
赤道上的火山上的冰川。
Volcan Cayambe, the furthest point away from the center of the earth. Can't see the top through the dense fog.
赤道、火山、冰川。
We met Giovanni, another guide from Safari, at the refuge. He looked very sincere and trustworthy, and we were happy to learn that he would be joining us to Cotopaxi on Sunday. Giovanni lived in New York for a year back in 1985 (in a restaurant), but regretted to have ever come back to Ecuador.
We had lunch inside the refuge. Safari prepared excellent food--potatoes, corns, bananas, onions, .... It was cold even inside the building, but being on a volcano on the equator made me happy. We met two groups of American climbers there, one group from Kentucky and the other somewhere nearby. Only a British climber stopped and chatted with us. He told us that these people would learn technical climbing with crampons and attempt to climb to the top of the vocalno the next day. I had serious doubt at these Americans.
Hiking down the road from the refuge of Cayambe Volcano.
从火山上走下坡路。
Plants and volcanic rocks on Volcan Cayambe.
山上的植物。
Plants on the hillside.
山边的植物。
The vegetation on the mountain was lovely. Fog and clouds made everything so green and fresh, yet only very short brushes were growing at this altitude. We "hiked" or walked down hill for about an hour before went back onto the jeep. When we passed through the village again, we stopped and gave a little boy on the roadsie the rest of our bread.
Sweeping landscape of Cayambe Valley.
凯扬波山谷的风景如画。
How green is Cayambe valley!
This boy came to ask for "christmas gift" and we gave him the leftover bread.
这个小男孩向我们讨礼物。我们把午餐剩余的面包都给了他。
This woman saw us giving the boy "gift", and she ran down from the hill toward us. Was she the mother of the boy? Or did she want gift for herself?
这个当地妇女见我们给男孩东西，也从山坡上跑下来，不知是也要东西，还是她是男孩的母亲。
Rommel dropped us off at Cayambe, a large city among the volcanoes on the Panamericana highway. From there we took a local bus toward Otavalo. The bus stopped constantly along the highway to pick up and drop off local passengers. It took 40 minutes, and cost $0.60 per person. Driving among snow-capped volcanos, one after another, was a spectacular sight.
At Otavalo bus stop a girl convinced me to visit her hotel. She was 19, pleasant, and a university student in Quito studying industrial engineering. She spoke fluent English because she had lived in the States for a summer. Too bad my companion wasn't in the mood to chat with strangers nor to consider her hotel. We checked into a modern hotel in town instead.
Otavalo is a very well-defined town with nice little streets, hotels and restaurants. Surrounded on all sides by beautiful mountains and volcanos, the sunset there was spectacular.
For dinner we went to Pizza Sicillian. Warm fireplace, cozy atmosphere, live musicians, and interesting people dining. I saw a young couple madly in love, a group of Ecuadorians feasting and playing cards, two Frenchmen, a group of Germans, and a group of three handsome people including a woman in a beautiful sweater and a tall local guy with long braided hair, SLR camera, hiking pants, modern gadgets, and perfect English accent--he chatted with me for a while and told me the names of all the instruments the musicians were playing.
Musicians at the pizza restaurant.
餐馆里的乐师们。
There was also a Japanese girl by herself, writing her diary. I invited the Japanese girl to our table. She spoke better Spanish than English, and told us that she was from Osaka and had been in Quayaguil for 10 months to study Spainish. I had never seen single Asian girl travelers before, and was surprised to meet two in one day. They gave me courage.
【文学城世界风情】厄瓜多尔２：赤道上的火山上的冰川，距离地心最远！
