Wow, what to say... It was a crazy day from trying to find someone to help us book the adventures we wanted to try (yes, we are still searching for help.)
So, after we couldn't find an agent to help us book our adventures... We hopped on a bus for 25 cents that would take us 1/2 way to where we would zip-line. After the 45 minute standing sardine bus ride, we discovered we likely wouldn't have time to wait the hour & 1/2 for the next bus to take us to the zip-line, so we grabbed a taxi. The taxi pulled over about 10 miles down the road telling us we were at our destination.Um, no we weren't! (Yes, for those of you wanting to know... we are experiencing a bit of a language barrier!) :-)
So instead, we had him drop us at telefériQo which is a 2.5 km (about 1.5 miles) sky tram that took us up the flanks of of Volcán Pichincha to the top of Cruz Loma (a mere 4100 m or 2.55 miles). From there, we started the hike to the top of jagged Rucu Pichincha which is at 4600 meters or about 3 miles. (and they are not kidding when they say jagged, but they should have added in straight up. No joke. It's a mere 3 hour hike. Ha! I'm in damn good shape, but this one got me. Literally we had to stop (a lot) to catch our breath. Did I mention it was
STRAIGHT up? I felt I was walking a treadmill at the incline of 25! We should have read the travel guide first as it warns not to make the hike if its your first day in Quito as you should allow yourself to acclimate. Oops! We made it about 2 1/2 hours up and thought it was in our best interest to turn around so we wouldn't get caught up in there the dark (the last bit we heard was even worse than what we had already experienced). It took us an hour to come down. We ran into rain on the way up... until, that is, we got above the clouds. We also walked through the clouds on our decent and yes, more rain after we broke through them. What an experience though. Yes, for a moment (or many) I wasn't sure if make it, but it was amazing. To get back to the bottom look up to where we were was astounding
Then, the trip back... We couldn't find a taxi, so we hopped on a bus we knew would get us close. We then took our map started walking.
At one point, we stop to read the map and a motorcycle slows down and all of a sudden I'm doused (hard to tell in the pic) with foam (kind of like silly string without the string). Later we found out this is very common for 'the carnival' and no one is exempt. We got a good laugh.
Now we are figuring out the rest of our trip and both exhausted from our day.
Good night my friends and loved ones...
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