Volcano Circuit Carihuairazo - Chimborazo - Day 1

From Ecuador

Check out the photos here (for those of you who don't like to read)

The Volcano Circuit trip was five days of hiking and camping around two volcanos - Carihuairazo and Cimborazo. I used my SPOT to mark various locations along the S shaped route around the volcanos and created the map below.

View Volcano Circuit in a larger map

We met at the Julio Verne office at 9am. I was, of course, early. There I met Gerdien (Dien) and Hans who were doing the trek with me. We filled large plastic bags with the gear that we would take with us and left the remainder of our stuff in the Julio Verne office. Julio Verne provides all the camping gear, food and other things like rubber boots, rain-wind gear, a balaclava. We also met our guide - Raul.

We set out to Tisaleo, a mountain village, in a jeep with all our gear piled on top. In Tisaleo we unloaded the gear and put it on three horses. We also had to take off our hiking boots and put on rubber boots. I may at the back of my mind thought this was overdoing it but later I was really glad to be wearing these boots because the trail was so muddy that at certain times I sunk in so far that I thought the mud would go over the top and/or the boot would become lodged in the mud and not come out.

We walked down into a glacial valley called the Salasaca Valley. It had all the markings of a glacial valley including huge rocks dotting the floor of the valley. There we lunched. We sat on large clumps of vegetation that I thought would be wet but were not. From here we walked up to our campsite. Along the way we had very nice views of Carihuairazo - a nearby mountain. When we reached our campsite we were startled to learn that the guide and two horse handlers set up our tents for us. I guess this is kind of first class camping. It then started to rain. I hid in my tent and listened to my ipod hoping it would stop. After the rain it was really clear and we had views of Tunguraha, Altar, and Carihuairazo mountains. Hans, Dien and I walked up to the top of a nearby hill and had some nice views of Chimborazo as well. All of these mountains are actually volcanos and some of Ecuador´s 17 active volcanos. Tunguraha has been very active for the last 11 years or so. I could see it letting off gases from the top.

Dinner was a very nice with potato soup, rice and a garbanzo bean dish. The others also had avocado salad and chicken. After dinner as one does when they are camping we went to bed. A small disaster struck not too long after that my sleeping bag zipper (issued by Julio Verne) broke. There was no way that I could go throught the night like that so I had to ¨knock¨on the tent of the guide and ask him what to do. He performed some magic and it worked again (for the time being). The sleeping bag and fleece liner were very warm and comfortable otherwise. I had a big tent to myself.