My first day in Quito, Monday, was spent mostly taking care of business (laundry, bank, emails) but I did manage to return to the Foundation Guayasimin with Anna to spend more time looking at the artwork. His work is so passionate that it was well worth the re-return. That evening Lee and I broke down and cooked a fabulous dinner for the ladies that they had been asking us to cook for about four weeks.
Tuesday was going to be my day in the old town, which did happen but I got a little side tracked. When riding on the bus I noticed an indigenous group marching in protest and thought this could be quite interesting to join. So I got off the bus in the old town and headed to Plaza Grande where I suspected the protest was headed. Everything I had read suggests that you avoid crowds of this nature for safety reasons. But I figured I would have no problem since it was a group of mostly older people, none of which wanted to cause a problem.
The police on the other hand weren't taking any chances. Even though they were very relaxed and chatting gleefully amongst each other, they were out in full force. I guessed that there were about 200 officers in various degrees of readiness. The most equipped was sporting full riot gear including helmet with face mask, gas mask, Plexiglas shield and enough canisters of tear gas to make Rambo look ill-equiped. Thankfully these were not used. Others were armed with nothing more than night sticks.
As I walked around the crowd talking to people and listening to the speeches I found out this protest was put on by the indigenous people from the coast and orient. Their goal was to protect their water and land from the pollution caused by the oil drilling and mining by foreign countries. It turns out that Ecuador is in the middle of changing their constitution and the indigenous people want this to be part of the new constitution. Because of the power they hold, this is very likely to happen.
Wednesday finally allowed me to do some climbing in the Andes. At around 7 in the morning I headed out with a tour group to attempt to climb to the Cotopaxi refuge (base camp). After picking everyone up from their hotels we started our drive to Cotopaxi. According to our guide, Francisco (with whom we spoke a mixture of English and Spanish the entire day) this was one of the best days he has ever had. He said he has never seen so much snow, let alone so many mountains in winter. We stopped numerous times along the way to take pictures Volcán Pinchincha, Volcán Rumiñahui, Volcán Iliniza Norte and Sur, Volcán Corazón and of course Volcán Cotopaxi. 
At 5,897m, Cotopaxi is the highest volcano in the world and the second highest peak in Ecuador. Our goal was to drive up as far as we could and then hike to the refuge at 4,800m (same height as Mount Blanc in France). Along the drive we were blessed with marvelous vistas of the Párama (Andean grasslands) which were speckled with bolders (some the size of cars) that were thrown there from the volcano's last erruption. We also managed to see various animals including a white tailed deer and a Colpeo (Andean fox).Due to the amount of snow (a light dusting by Canadian standards, but Ecuadorians aren't used to driving in snow) we had to leave the car before reaching the parking lot, approximately 4,000m. From there we began our three hour hike to the refuge.
This hike had to be one of the hardest walks in my life. The first little bit (entirely through snow and very loose gravel) was hard, but passable. The story changed once we hit the 4,500m mark. My stride grew smaller; my heart pumped faster and even talking caused me to be out of breath. Needless to say we trudged onwards. The last 300m took one hour and I had to take a rest every 5 minutes, which made it feel like I would never reach the refuge ... it looked so close. Even though it was the hardest walk of my life, reaching the refuge gave me such a feeling of accomplishment. The soup and hot chocolate they served at the refuge would have to be the best I ever had. Either that or it was because I have never put so much effort into getting to a restaurant.
Regardless of how hard it was to get up there, going down was completely different. Each step got easier and at one point we were able to run down the hill. Once we returned to the bus we headed back to Quito where I experienced one of the common side effects of this hike .... a serious headache. By the time I got back to Quito, all I could do was lie down and try to sleep .... but even that was extremely hard.Thursday ..... nothing happened.
Friday on the other hand was a different story. Anna and I headed to Papallacta for a day in the hot springs. After returning to the hostel to pick up my bathing suit we headed off. At the end of the bus ride we found a lovely set of hot springs nestled in the mountains. Since it was a cold day, the steam was drifting off the pools and small low flying clouds drifted past. It made the day magical and extremely relaxing. Anna and I are already planning to go back .... even though there is not much time left in Ecuador.
