Cotopaxi…Independence Day on a volcano
Hola amigos! It´s time for another update! This story starts off on the early morning of Independence Day 2009. The entire group of students here in Quito met outside the school at 7am to get ready for some extreme off road biking. We piled into three rickety trucks/vans to begin our two hour trip to the world´s largest active volcano. The volcano is inside of ¨Parque Nacional Cotopaxi.¨ When the crew arrived at the park entrance they received a quick history of the park and the volcano. Not only did they learn that the volcano has had a few violent eruptions in the past few centuries, it was due in the next 10-15 years for another one (one eruption approx. every 120 years).
After this promising news we piled back into the van to ascend 2.5 kilometers where we would get on mountain bikes and head down. One extremely curvy road later we arrived at our destination only to find ourselves in the middle of the blizzard. Our guides decided that it was too dangerous to start from that point so we descended 1 kilometer to where the snow was less blinding.
We hopped on our bikes and literally began shooting down the mountain. It didn't seem incredibly steep but if you didnt hold both brakes down you would begin to reach Tour de France speeds on a rocky and snowy path. I was in quite a dilemma because I was very cold and wanted to get to warmer weather, but on the flip side I wasnt in the mood to die so I balanced desires and still made it to our first checkpoint in pretty good time.
At our first checkpoint we had descended far enough that there was no snow and it seemed that we were in the middle of the desert! The sun was out, the weather was hot, and little vegetation was to be found. Right before the first checkpoint the guy in front of me went down hard and flipped his bike over him. Luckily he was fine but his leather jacket was a little scratched up. Overall we only had 4 or 5 people fall down out of 16 and only was somewhat serious (he fell and hit his head and it cracked the helmet!). Everyone made it home safely and had a good time though.
All in all it was a great day and the scenery was breathtaking. Our first trip as a group was successful!
