ON TOP OF THE WORLD (for a little while, at least): Pichincha and Papallacta!

This past weekend, I took two of trips in one day for my Volcanology class. We went to Pichincha in the morning, and Papallacta in the afternoon. The Pichincha trip left at 3:30AM. I’m not exactly sure why except that we got to watch the sunrise from the top of the mountain/volcano. Pichincha is the mountain range/volcano that I can see out my window, just in case you were curious.

On Friday night I ended up sleeping at the house of my friend Lauren. Almost all of the Kalamazoo students who came down with me are in Volcanology, so we tend to go on these trips together. This time, Lauren, Phuong, Matt and I decided to spend the night at Lauren’s on her floor. She lives really close to where we were leaving from, so it made it easier for all of us (otherwise we’d have to take a cab at 3:00AM!). So we got up at 3:00 and walked with all our stuff down to the parking lot of the Mexican Embassy, from which we were leaving. We got there and were split up into 4X4s to be driven up the mountain. We probably left around 3:45, and started off through Quito to steep climb up Pichincha.

We drove for about an hour before we were at the base of the side of the mountain we were going up. And then the crazy, bumpy, curvy climb began. We were driving on this super narrow, curvy, pot-holey road that was slowly curving us around the mountain. Sometimes it was really steep. Sometimes it took really abrupt turns that were very very frightening. But we were in a long line of cars (there were about 60 of us on the trip) so it was easy to see where we needed to go.

Though this part of the trip was terrifying, because it was dark and you felt like you could drive off a cliff at any moment, it was also one of the most beautiful parts of the trip. I was in the front seat, and I could see out my window so many stars. Living in the city, you can almost never see stars, and I’ve missed them. But here we were driving up this crazy road, and I could see so many stars I could burst. Occasionally we’d turn and be facing the city again. It, of course, was all lit up. It was this strange duplicity of things. Here I was looking at the twinkling stars, and back at the twinkling lights of the city. Manmade stars, almost. With streetlights configuring them into manmade constellations. And I could see Orion in the sky, and so much. It was incredible. And though I was exhausted, I was so happy to be where I was at that moment.

Once we reached the end of the road, which really was where the cars couldn’t drive anymore, we got out and began to hike up the mountain. It was still dark, and it was absolutely freezing. We had been warned, though. I was wearing three layers and my down vest, along with the hat I bought a few weeks ago from the weavers in Agato (boy was that a useful buy!). And I was pretty warm. I made the mistake of not leaving my backpack in the car like a lot of other people did. I didn’t know that we could. So I also had all my stuff with me. It was okay, though. Then we started the hike.

I was walking with Lauren and Matt in the beginning, but because of the altitude, I was having a hard time breathing. I knew it was going to happen, so I told Lauren and Matt I was going to rest and stopped for a bit. I don’t think they heard me. But I kept walking, then stopping to rest until I was one of the last few people still walking. At one point, I started to feel really light headed from the altitude and decided to stop and sit. At this point, my throat was also raw from the dryness of the air. So I sat down in the ash on top of the volcano and rested until I regained some measure of breathe-ability, and then continued climbing. At one point some Ecuadorians were walking with me. When I stopped again after a little while, they told me that it was much much further and that if I wasn’t doing well, I should just stop and wait for them to come back there. Because I was feeling light-headed I agreed, especially since I thought where we were headed was really far away. For a while, I felt defeated. I felt like I gave up. So I’d get up and try again. I did that a few times, but then I couldn’t get up without coughing a lot, and I decided just to sit and wait. I didn’t even know where we were going. Everyone else had already cleared the top of the peak nearest to me, and I didn’t know where they went after that, since it was still dark. So I sat and waited.

I’m actually really glad I did. I ended up sitting on the side of Pichincha and watching the sunrise by myself. If I had gone up to the peak with everyone else, I would’ve had to listen to people talk about rocks, and would have had to wade through people to get a clear view of the sunrise. But it was incredible. First, clouds started to move in (half the reason I didn’t try to walk any more was because there were clouds surrounding me and I couldn’t see that far ahead). Then the sun started to come up. Against the mountain back drop, and through these clouds that kept moving around the mountain, where we were became clear, and it was absolutely gorgeous. I have many many pictures from this time. I think I got the sunrise in every stage. Even when the sun just started to break through the clouds. It was incredible. And I was just happy to be there. Happy to be able to see that sunrise over Pichincha.

Once the sun came up, I heard voices and looked to my right, and everyone else was, comparatively, really close to where I was. I’m sure that if I had known how much further I had to go, I would’ve been fine making it there. It just would’ve taken me awhile. I started to feel ashamed again as everyone was coming down, and the elation I had felt being on top of the mountain started to dissipate. I started to come back down and reached where the cars were, and everyone kept asking me if I was alright. I wanted to say that of course I was. I got to watch this incredible sunrise and I was happy when I was up there. It was just the altitude. And if I had been able to see where we were going, I would’ve made it. But I just felt ashamed at not having made it. Lauren, Matt and Phuong told me that I didn’t miss much. That all they were doing up there was freezing their butts off and climbing up to a very dangerous point, which together was not a good mix. But I still felt bad. Matt and Phuong made me feel better after a while though, so I came down from Pichincha as happy as when I was up there.

On the trip down on that scary scary road, I realized how good a driver the guy driving our 4X4 was. It was scarier in the daylight because we could see every cliff and every drop off. But it was still incredible. We could see the make up of the land. And all the animals climbing all over the place. There were cows that I swear were standing on what looked like a vertical, tree-covered cliff across a valley. It looked like they had been placed there as though in a model. It was incredible. And there were horses walking around on the mountain, too. It was pretty crazy. I’m pretty sure that there are groups of farmers that use the land for their animals. We saw a lot of people on the way back herding animals up the same road we were going down on. It was pretty incredible to think that people use this treacherous path every day.

Just after we’d gotten down the mountain and reached the normal road, tragedy struck. In our caravan there were tons of cars. We had just started driving through this small indigenous town when we saw one of the cars in our caravan smashed into a post. There were villagers running towards the site of the accident and a swarm of them around the accident. Most of the villagers were yelling and gesturing angrily. We were all just trying to figure out what happened. “Que pasó?” I asked the driver. He told me he didn’t know. We continued a little further down the road and then pulled off to the side with the rest of the cars in the caravan. Word was quickly passed up the line that the driver had tried to swerve from hitting a woman, but had hit her and then hit the pole. A lot of the students had gotten out of their cars to try to see what happened (no one in my car), when suddenly the villagers, who were obviously very angry, started hitting the driver and one of the leaders of our group. The cops had showed up only a little before then, but apparently that didn’t deter anyone. The villagers had apparently pulled out machetes and were running towards the fight. Needless to say, all the students started running back into their cars. Matt was nearby when it happened, and he just ran. He was in the car behind mine. An Ecuadorian just jumped into our car even though we were full. He was so scared. Apparently, the villagers beat up the driver of the car that hit the woman.

After that happened, the cops were forcing us to stay there. I was really upset about the whole thing. I didn’t know what to think about it. I prayed a lot. And just sat in my car. Eventually we all started to get restless and got out to walk around. But the cops had blocked off the road and weren’t letting any of us leave. One of the leaders of the trip was on the phone nearby, talking to other police, I think, trying to get them to let us through. He was explaining that there were sixty or so students trying to leave the town and that they weren’t letting us. I was listening to this guy try to negotiate our way out and wondering where the hell the ambulance was. We were probably there for an hour or an hour and a half, maybe even longer, and that whole time, no ambulance came. I was so mad. I don’t think the woman would’ve died if the ambulance had showed up. In fact, we’re not even sure if the woman died.

Eventually, we were allowed to leave. So we all pulled out of the street and started to find out way to the road. My car was leading the way because the other car that had been leading us was just taking us in circles. We got the road, only to find another group of villagers blocking our way, along with a roadblock on the road. The villagers were walking around saying things like, “they’re companions of the driver who killed so-and-so. No one should be allowed to leave after they’ve killed someone.” ect. That’s just my rough translation of what I thought I heard. It’s possible that they were saying something else. But it made me really upset that the woman had died. And it made me feel really bad for being on the trip. On top of that, I was exhausted already, and I had a headache, and frankly had to use the bathroom. I just didn’t know what to do with myself. The other two Americans in my car were acting very immature about it all. They kept saying things like, “killing someone isn’t cool.” and one of the girls sent a text message from her phone to one of her friends and said she was hoping her friend would ask questions. It was really inappropriate.

When we were finally allowed to go, we drove straight to Quito. Most of the people on my trip were going to Papallacta, myself included. We were supposed to get back to Quito around 8:30 so we could eat breakfast and board the bus. Unfortunately, we didn’t get back until 9:30 when the bus was supposed to leave. I went crazy trying to find a bathroom because I knew I wouldn’t get to use one again until I returned to Quito later in the day. I didn’t want the bus to leave without me, though, and I was already so upset about the car accident. It was just a bad mixture of things. I found a bathroom, and made it to the bus before it left. I apparently had missed our professor, Theo, who had showed up for the trip and explained what happened to when people died in car accidents, but had said that woman hadn’t died. He hadn’t been on the trip, so we weren’t sure who to believe. All the students who had been there thought the woman had died. The driver was in jail, and Theo quickly took off to go figure things out, though he was supposed to be on the trip with us.

And then we left for Papallacta. This whole trip was pretty terrible because Theo didn’t come with us. The two other professors who went along, I felt, didn’t know what they were doing. We stopped at various places and talk about a few things, but mostly we just walked a lot through mud to see stuff we could’ve seen by the road. Our final stop of the day was this river/mountainside in which we literally climbed up to the mountainside through a ton of mud. My shoes were absolutely covered. And once we reached the top, we didn’t know why we were even there. It was like “let’s climb this big wall of mud and oh look, there’s some rocks.” There was no point in it. It was kind of fun, except I was so worried about my shoes. I had bought hiking shoes just for Ecuador and I didn’t want to ruin them because of some pointless trip. But it was at least a little fun. We had to cross this crazy wooden-plank bridge to get there, too. Just like the woodenly bridges you see in the movies. I was terrified. The river below was raging with rapids. I was quite freaked out. Once we got out, there was a woman who was selling Empanadas on a stand by the road. Twenty-five cents. It was the only food I’d had all day other than some muffins I had brought with me. I thought I was going to get breakfast at least, but because of the accident, I didn’t. It was about 4:00PM by the time I ate the empanadas. Talk about a long day without food.

At the end of all this, one of the buses was supposed to stay in Papallacta to go to the hot springs there. Me and all my friends on the trip were really excited about it. Especially after such a long and terrible day. If Theo had come with us, we were sure it would’ve been more interesting and informative, but it was pretty much pointless. So we were exhausted and just ready to relax. Unfortunately, only eighteen people wanted to go. There were eighty of us on the trip, and unless we got thirty five people to stay in Papallacta for the hot springs, not everyone would have a seat on the bus. So of course, even that hope was ruined.

I got home, showered, ate, and went to bed, I was so exhausted. The day was emotionally and physically exhausting. And though there were parts of it that were fun, I hate to admit that by the end of it, I resented the fact that I even went. Maybe if I had only done Pichincha, I’d have been happy. But Papallacta was just terribly exhausting and pointless. I didn’t learn a thing. And I didn’t get my hotsprings.

Overall, it was frustrating. On Monday and Tuesday of this week we learned that the guy’s breaks had stopped working because his car was overheated. And We also learned that the woman did die. The driver, who was my professor’s aide, and a student at USFQ, went to jail, and I think he was in the hospital too. It was just a really sad experience. They’ve cancelled all the remaining trips to Pichincha because of it.

This weekend I’m going to Cuicocha with the class. I’ve already been there (part of the Otavalo trip. The bit I didn’t talk about) so expect a report on that later this week.

Hope everyone is well! More boring posts to be made soon!