Ecuador Volcanoes Expedition Dispatch

November 19, 2010 – Beautiful Weather for Our Farewell to Chimborazo

This is Leila Silveira reporting from Quito. Today we woke up in Chimborazo with the most beautiful weather: blue skies, sunny and no wind, everything we had hoped to have in the past 2 weeks... Well, at least we able to see some of the mountains that we climbed as we are leaving Ecuador.

Seeing Chimborazo was really a treat! We all ended up being delayed at least an extra half hour since we wanted to take photos of the mountain that had hidden from us for the past few days.

We were all in good spirits and actually happy to be able to have a day that we didn’t have to keep our Gore-Tex jackets handy! The rain was really getting old...

In our drive back to Quito it felt like we were in another country; we were able to see the colors, the famous Avenue of Volcanoes, everything. It is amazing how beautiful Ecuador is.

We made a few stops, first in a town famous for barbecuing guinea pig where we all tried them. It really tastes like a mix of chicken and turkey, a bit on the dry side. It was really interesting to sample this popular Andean food.

Right after that, we stopped in another town famous for their ice creams! Again, we all tasted their ice creams. I highly recommend the coconut one; it was excellent.

Then we finally arrived back in Quito to the JW Marriott, where we were back to the luxury of civilization.

The afternoon was spent with the team members walking around Quito. Joaquin and Osvaldo did their last minute shopping. Lynette and Steve decided to change their flights and remain only in Ecuador during this trip; they are not going further south anymore. They booked a trip to the jungle and they will end their holiday with a drive along the coast of Ecuador, a bit of beach and warm weather before returning home. The weather in Calgary is already -25C.

The last dinner together was a few blocks from the hotel, in a very funky restaurant, where we all had great meals and saw the local party action.

Hugo mentioned that early on when they were walking in that area he noticed a discotheque opened with a line of teenagers outside. It turns out that in Quito, the disco opens in the afternoon for kids under 18 where no alcohol is served. Great idea, parents can take their kids to parties at decent hours; it also enables places that usually are closed during the day to open for the young crowd.

Hugo gave a great speech in Spanish to our guides which I translated into English. We all exchanged hugs and I am proud to say that we arrived as a team and left as friends. We all exchanged photos and tomorrow we are all leaving to our different destinations.

Best of luck for everyone and I have no doubt that we will all keep in touch!