Volcano Circuit Carihuairazo - Chimborazo - Day 4

From Ecuador

More photos here.

I think that yesterday we kind of amazed our guide, Raul, when we asked for more places to walk to. We just expected to walk longer than we did. I guess that were were the fittest group that he had had so far because he said that we made much better time than the other groups.

We were only the fourth group to do this trip. It was a new program. Raul was really great and suggested that we walk the fourth and fifth day's distance all today. Then we would walk up Chimborazo on the fifth day before we left. We were all keen to do this as long as we had no altitude problems. We decided to make a decision at lunch when we reached the planned campsite for the day.

Despite it being very cool in the morning, I was very warm walking up, up, up. It was much drier on this side of the mountain. They call it a desert. The air became much thinner and breathing was more and more difficult. At lunch we all felt fine and decided to walk on to the Carrel refuge. I have to say on this day we didn't have alot more energy after reaching our destination but we were happy with our choice.

This refuge was much more crowded. There was a group of taxi drivers there have a big work party. They roasted a pig and were eating that. Of course, there were alot of jokes thrown my way because of the vegetarian thing. We also met a group of doctors from Utah. They were doing a study on the physiology of Ecuadorians related to living and visiting high altitudes. Because the refuge was such a busy place Raul and Diario had to wait to get into the kitchen. Since they prepare everything from scratch dinner took a little while. We were really hungry by the time we got dinner. The refuge had no electricity. Raul set up candles and we ate by candlelight. It was really cozy and nice.

After dinner we all had a touch of altitude sickness - headache and stomach. We went to bed hoping to acclimate overnight.