To the Refugio

The night was truely freezing and at some point the wind changed directions so for the second half of the night the wind was blowing through our tent. Linnea and I both woke up with a lovely suprise, Systemic Pulmonary Edema, which roughly translates into a severely puffy face due to altitude. We looked like monsters, we could have scared small children. The guy who came to tell us there was room in their Jeep up to the parking lot before the refugio said he didnt recognize us! So anyway, eventually our faces started to go down and we managed to do the fastest camp pack up ever- 20 minutes to go from eating breakfast with everything unpacked to putting our packs on the Jeep in 20, pretty amazing!

We got a ride up to the parking lot with the guys who were going to acclimate at the refugio before their summit attempt. We had originally planned on finishing our breakfast in the parking lot but when we got out we were convinced otherwise. There was nothing there, no plants, nothing- it was too high. the wind was literally strong enough to blow you over and definitely strong enough to take away what little break you had if you faced the wind. So we just started up the mountain...slowly. We only had a kilometer to hike but it took us about 45 minutes- it was that steep and high!

Finally though, we did get to the refugio, at a whopping 4890 meters, which is higher than anywhere in the continental US. And wow was it cold!! We went into the refugio to defrost and have lunch, but we didnt get to do much defrosting, it was pretty much the same temperature inside as out, just without the wind.

We saw people who had attempted the summit the previous night and after we were there for an hour or so we saw the people get back who had actually achieved the summit. They said that the time we had come up was pretty much as windy as it gets so that was amusing. We knew we were on a serious mountain and out of our element when the people around us were talking about summitting Everest, and not about how they'd like to do it but about the companies they'd used, which they liked best, etc!!! We met some other Americans in the refugio who had rented a car for the day so they let us pay their driver to take us back to the turn off to catch a bus back to Latacunga and then on to Banos.

In Banos, we stayed in Hostel Transylvania, which is the best deal we've had- $6 for a private room, hot showers, and complementary breakfast- it was amazing! We were also able to get some much needed laundary done there :)