The last week of my volunteer program was spent up at school sanding and painting like a mad woman. The first day I was yellow from sanding and the next two days I was looking more like a Smurf. A week later, I am still picking blue paint from my nails. But the eating area, desks and tables looked a million bucks from our efforts. Something exciting for the kids for the start of the new school year.
I an effort to learn Spanish, I had made it a routine to say buenos días (good morning) to the animals on the way up to school, and buenas tardes (good afternoon) on the way down, using their Spanish names (i.e. vaca for cow). My last day at Larc was the last chance I had to say adios to the cows, chooks and dogs on my way down. Much to my horror, halfway down the hill, Elliot announced to me that actually chickens were only called pollo´s when they were cooked and on your plate. When they were alive they were in fact called gallina. Thanks Elliot, that only took you 7 weeks to tell me! But none the less, it was, as always, a beautiful walk down, a walk that I will never forget.
On Thursday afternoon after a day of lesson planning, all the volunteers jumped in the GVI van and took the 6 hour journey to Baños, a small adventure town at the base of the active volcano, Tungurahua. Tungurahua is in the same ring of fire as the one in Chile that went off a couple of months ago. Offering whitewater rafting, mountain biking, massages and even colon cleansing, Baños was a great place for everyone to do as they pleased. For me, this included talking an Ecuadorian local into teaching me how to salsa dance, having a chocolate facial, and generally relaxing after 7 weeks of havoc.
On a spur of the moment, I decided to do a climb up Cotopaxi, in an attempt to reach a glacier at 5,000m. Starting at Latacunga at 2,760m, we drove up to a base at 4,500m. As soon as we stepped out of the car, the horizontal snow started, followed shortly by screaming winds. Our guide had said that we needed to get up and down as quickly as possible, because some bad weather was coming in (could it get any worse?). So off we set, at quite a slow pace compared to what I was expecting. I soon figured out why the guide was going relatively slow…after we hit about 4,700m the altitude sickness kicked in. At first it was only a bit of dizziness, but after passing the refuge at 4,800m, a headache and nausea also took me by surprise. At every stop I had made sure to eat either nuts or chocolate and drink water, but by 5,000m, eating was the last thing I felt like doing! Being that snow and I generally do not agree, it was a little scary (and slippery!) to be walking on the side of a volcano with a huge slope right next to me. Exhilarating though! We got back to the refuge and had the best hot chocolate known to man and some lunch, then headed back to the base. I would defiantly do it again, but boy was I buggered that night!
