Back to where it all began.

May 17th, 2011

Today was pretty uneventful.  I woke up at 6:30 and headed up to the rooftop terrace for a breakfast instead of heading to the market like I have done the 2 months before.  My stomach is officially messed up, but I am still not feeling terribly awful.  I had pancakes, yogurt, fruit and a coffee.  After breakfast, I packed up and headed out to grab my bus to Quito.  It was only about 3.5 hours in the bus, so it was an easy ride.  Along the way, I saw the top of a couple volcanos because it was such a clear, sunny day.  I saw Tungurahua (very active one above Banos), Cotopaxi (the one that I am summiting), and Chimborazo (the one that I hiked to a few days back).  The first was spewing ash, and the other two are snow covered and jut out from the mountains.  All three are pretty hard to miss. 

I rolled into Quito's new bus terminal at about 2:30 in the afternoon and found that it is about 10km south of the city.  I loaded onto a bus with all my junk and headed for the center.  I must have gotten off too early or at the wrong stop, because I was still a solid 10 minute cab ride from where I needed to be.  In any case, I grabbed a cab and made it to the Secret Garden Hostal.  It has a pretty sweet rooftop terrace and the other parts seem to be nice.  There are a ton of people here though, so it isn't too peaceful.  I took a walk down to the Old City, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.  It is pretty much as I remember it the first time we were here and our one Spanish teacher from Inlingua brought us from the New City to show us.  They are doing quite a bit of restoration work on different plazas and churches, but the one main central square is still one of the most beautiful I have seen. 

I am currently sitting back at the hostel on the rooftop terrace looking out onto the city.  The panorama is below and as you can see is pretty awesome.  Tomorrow I leave at 9am for the base camp of Cotopaxi, and at midnight on Friday we will start the hike.  I am still going to give the volcano a go even though I am not feeling the greatest, and with my bullheadedness I am going to get up that thing if I have to crap myself to do it, literally.  Pray that it won't come to that, both for me and the others who I am going to be hiking with.  Check back with the results of the hike in a few days!

The 180 degree view from the top of the hostel

"Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back."

My name's not Kotter, but this will suffice.