Ecuador Volcanoes Expedition Dispatch

November 3, 2012 – Our Adventure Begins in Quito

Leila Silveira reporting from Quito in our Volcanoes of Ecuador expedition. No wonder Quito is, according to UNESCO, “best preserved, least altered historic center in Latin America”. This is a city, should I say, country, that one needs to visit at least once in a life time. It pretty much have it all, mountains, beaches, amazon and let’s not forget Galapagos! It is always a pleasure to return here and I am back now with a climbing team of friends and veterans Berg Adventures climbers.

Chris, who has arrived from Toronto a day ahead of schedule, has done a lot in one extra day. We both arrived the same day, we had an amazing dinner at the Argentinian restaurant Hacienda at our hotel in Quito – the Marriott. Great dinner, we both enjoyed an awesome steak.

Chris has been going to the hotel gym where she quickly realized that she is at high altitude. Quito with 9,350 feet (2,800 meters above sea level) definitely is a lot higher than Toronto. Used to running in a treadmill at certain pace, she saw how fast her heart started racing here. She didn’t let that stop her, she did an entire day of sightseeing and went back to the gym for a second round this morning before checking out and going to the mountain.

Ljerka and Jeremy, arriving from Genève where they are now residing, are also adjusting quite well. As soon as they arrived, we had our briefing where they met our guides, Joaquin, from Ecuador and Osvaldo, who had also just arrived from La Paz, Bolivia, his home town.

We talked about plans, itineraries, goals and concerns. Dealing with ghosts is one of them; we mentioned that some of the local haciendas are famous for having full time ghost’s residents. Let’s just say that we will be happy to share our experiences in our dispatch if we come across one of them.

We left Quito around 9:30 in the morning, after a nice breakfast, organizing our gear, storing some of our clothes and valuable at our hotel and Quito. Now, it is time to go and Otavalo is our first stop, where we will spend 3 nights at our favourite Hacienda – Hacienda Cusin - a mix of elegance, European taste and rustic style.