Though we were hiking along the dirt/mud road, the jeep with all of our gear drove up ahead of us. It went over some ridiculous rocks, and I began to have a true appreciation of the Jeeps in Ecuador. (Don’t worry Jeep at home, you’re still my favorite Jeep! Ok, I’m pretty sure cars don’t have feelings, but I just felt I should give a shout-out.)

After awhile, we came to a point in the road where the even the totally cool Jeep couldn’t go any further. The reason the Jeep had been driving up in the first place was to bring all our climbing gear, but we could tell that it was going to rain so climbing would be unsafe and out of the question.

So the Jeep turned around and we kept…you guessed it…hiking! The mud road soon narrowed down into a thin path through really thick grass. By this time the terrain had leveled out a bit so we weren’t huffing and puffing quite as much. Also, the puddles that had been water were ice at this altitude, though it didn’t feel that cold. Then we came to a point where we took a break. After the break, Diego and Ramiro told us to climb up!

a quick break before leaving the trail

I looked up and saw a large hill, er, I guess we were on a mountain, of grass, but no path. So we started scrambling up the grass, and let me say, the grass of the Andes mountains is STRONG. I just grabbed handfuls of grass and to help haul myself up the next step.

scrambling up the mountain 'o grass

After lots of quality scrambling, we reached, Puntas, the top! They are some really pointy rocks that we were going to climb, but because of the incoming weather, we decided to leave our climbing gear behind. It was a good thing we did too, because the moment (and I mean MOMENT) we reached the top it started hailing like crazy! So we hiked, well, I more skidded, down the trailess grass incline. Haha, I felt more like I was skiing because it was pretty slippery and I kept doing switchbacks, like I do when I try to ski down a slope that makes me nervous. Finally we got to the trail where we hiked quickly along until we came to now very muddy road.

Peter and Pedro at the top! (check out the pointy rock, one of the Puntas)

Then when we got to the cow pasture, we found that the cows were gone…but had been replaced by bulls! Diego told us that the bulls could be pretty angry; I believe “agressivo” was the word he used, so we had to walk along the side of the path opposite of the bulls and be very quiet. We made it through without an incident, and I decided I did not want to be a bullfighter. Just in case I had been considering that career, which I hadn’t.

Okay, so all those black dots on the right are bulls. I know they don't look that close to the road but believe me, walking on the left side of the narrow road was plenty close for me.

After we made it through the now bulls pasture, we continued along and finally reached the drop-off point. Partway through our hike down, the intense hail had turned into intense rain, so needless to say we were SOAKED by the time we made it to the Jeeps. Still, we didn’t really have time to change, so we piled into the Jeeps once more and headed back into the town of Quinche.

Anto and me in the back of the Jeep...my shirt is wet from the rain (should have zipped up that sweatshirt all the way), not from sweat. Really!

Once in Quinche, we invaded a Chifa restaurante (a Chinese restaurant) and changed into dry (yes! I was soooooo glad I packed all the clothes I did) and most of us ordered what Ramiro ordered since we had no idea what was good. Fortuneatly, Ramiro picked well, and we all enjoyed a meal of HOT food.

Now somewhat cleaner, dryer, and warmer, and definitely better fed, we loaded up onto a bus back to Quito!!!!!

I slept very well in my bed that night.