Goodbye Ecuador

 Last omelette in Otavalo, putting the yarn into balls, seeing Imbabura through the bus window, the Mad Max bus ride to Quito, seeing my old friend Juan, like fantasma, a ghost at the airport.

goodbye Ecuador, hello Korean Daegu airport hotel room. 

Imbabura

 First, dinner the day before, eating as much tostado corn as possible with bananas.
Then there was the surprise birthday party. Happy Birthday Chark!  And lots of cake.
Then at 6:00 AM walk to the bus terminal, take the bus to Ibara, 35 cents, then find the next bus to La Esperanza, another 30 cents, then get loaded into the back of a pick up like cattle truck that heads up the mountain on a stone paved road.

 The trail is steep, going through grasses up the ridge higher and higher with huge views of the valleys below.

 Then there is a strange Yucca forest, the most beautiful plant I have ever seen, then get closer and it has delicate blue flowers...The summit was cold, encased in fog, snow and ice covering the windward side of everything.  The wind was blowing wildly as I ate the egg salad sandwich I made last night. I was one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever done, so beautiful I did not have enough capacity to contain my sense of wonder at it all.  We hiked fast, being led by a Isa, from Bilboa, and it felt good going from warm to cold to frozen windstorm to shelter to warm to very warm again.

And back to the town of dogs 

Master Weavers of Agato

 The Tahuantinsuyo Weaving Workshop, including master weaver Miguel Andrango. Miguel and I sat in the sun inside the courtyard while the wool was boiling in the blueberry dye, warmed by the fire and smoke billowing in swirls, we discussed his upcoming 83rd birthday and other matters of little consequence, I felt like I could have sat with him in the sun for the rest of the day.

Otavalo and the quest for Imbabura

 Otavalo at night, coming over the top of the hill from Agato, finding the best papas fritas in a restaurant on the top of a hill, we were the only ones there, maybe the only ones who were ever there. One day we tried to find a path to Imbabura from the weaving shop at Agato, but were turned back by a large gorge filled with wild blackberry bushes. Along the way down, a family gave us small white beans, telling us to take them home and plant them again.

Imbabura is an old volcano above Otavalo, we have never seen the top of it, it is magically shrouded in clouds. But on the way we met a grandfather and grandmother and their three grand children who told us historias about the mountain and promised that there is way to the top.

The most we can say about nirvana is that it transcends all notions and concepts.I admire them because they are trees, they are rocks, they are water.  I bow to a rock because it is a rock ( Thich nhat Hanh) 

Cayambe 18, 900 feet

The charming Casa Helbling in Quito

Standing on the equator, right on the equator , on the way to the snow capped Cayambe, which is completely hidden in clouds

the lovely green and brown hills driving into the mountains toward the volcano with our guides Marco and Romel. Some people don't like guides, but I like to have a guide every now and then.  Anyway, a guide is required to climb any volcano with a glacier in Ecuador because people kept falling in an dying. Falling in crevasses. It was a narrow winding rocky road that gradually turned to ice and snow.  When we could go no further, we put on all of our mountaineering clothes and boots and hiked up to the refuge, which is about 15,200 feet.

 The lonely view from the refuge. The wind was howling  and the windows were becoming covered in ice and snow.  After the hot soup and sandwiches, we  went out anyway to practice ice axe arrests and crampon techniques.

 It was cold and very windy, so we went back inside to get ready for the climb to the peak, scheduled to begin at midnight.  I got up at 11:15 to get ready to start hiking,  but Marco and Romel  said, we are going to check out the mountain, the wind was howling and the windows were covered in ice.   I woke up again around 1:30, but it was the same story, then I woke up at 4:30, got my boots on and then just went to the dining area and talked to Marco about the dangers of climbing, then  drank hot chocolate while he told stories about climbing ghosts.  It was so windy we could hardly stand up.  We decided, wouldn't it be great  to visit  old Quito since we had to travel to Otavalo tomorrow?   But when we walked down to the range rover, in crampons,  it was frozen in ice, so we put our crampons back on and started breaking up the ice on the road  with ice axes so the vehicle could drive back down the mountain.  Finally we started driving down, until we came to the  beautiful valleys with eucalyptus trees and green and brown rolling hills, getting warmer and warmer as we went down.