Somebody get me a T-shirt that says “I climbed Mount Ilalo and Survived (Barely)”

It seems we’ve been pretty busy lately during the weekends, which is good as I find myself quite bored when I have to stay in the apartment too long. This weekend after a fun night Friday at the Teleferico, and then Saturday service and Meeting (we didn’t get to go to our usual Café to prepare our WT’s as we usually do on Saturday afternoons, due to the rainy conditions.) our book study made plans to climb one of the mountains that borders our valley. It didn’t sound too extreme, so we weren’t too worried, but as always we were surprised by what the reality really was.

I´ll give you the pics first, then the story to follow...

Maira Torres, one of the two very tall Torres sisters. We also like to hang around them so we don´t feel like Amazon ladies on our own.

Fausto Serrano, the brother of our landlord, and a good friend.



I wish I had panned out, so you could see the starting point of our hike, but suffice it to say it is way to the left. The range behind is part of it.

Strange Mountain People

Once at the top... flat land!!

Erica, the other Torres sister.

Danny Caiseda with his baby food...? Not sure

Resting Spot #1.





This dog followed us the entire hike.



I think I see a mountain in the distance...

Luis Vargas our Bookstudy Overseer, Eduardo, and another girl in my hall.

Our Valley of Tumbaco


Digging a road.













Meeting at the Hall. We were 17 in all by the time we left.



Hiking....to our hike.








A parade in the street we ran into on the way to the Mountain. One of the clowns (not in the pic) cornered me in some kind of dance and the brothers had to save me. The video below stops abruptly when I turned the camera off to focus on getting awy from the scary clown!






We met the brothers in front of the K Hall (next door) at 07h00 (that’s 7am), had a reading of the text and got on our way. The first leg of the hike was walking from the neighborhood to the mountain, about a 20 minute walk. As we looked up the side of the mountain from the bottom, I began to wonder why I thought we would be capable of such a trip.

So off we went, enjoying the sights and smells and fresh air. We passed a number of small homes and families on the way. The Mountains are full of Indigenous people and their livestock, so it was exciting to see that part of the country we’re living in. I believe it is all in the territory of the South Congregation. We passed workers making a road, herds of cows, horses and donkeys, the most beautiful mountain flowers ever, and an old man with a donkey hauling bushels of something. He was very funny and wanted to entertain us with jokes as we passed. I didn’t understand the funniest one that had everyone rolling on the ground in hysterics. But apparently it was bad, as no one wanted to explain it to me.

It only took about 45 minutes to realize there was no way we were making it up the mountain with our heavy backpacks. What were we thinking? So although we felt bad, we acquiesced when the brothers insisted on carrying them, in addition to their own for a while. The brothers are very sweet here and treat the women with much respect and care. You brothers back home, take notes!! It’s very different from the Latin culture we are use to in the States. Anyway, the extra baggage didn’t seem to slow them down. People from this part of the world, at such great heights, have better lungs than we do. They are use to the altitude as we are not. So not only are they use to walking everywhere in all terrains, but they can do so with less effort due to their superhuman lung capacity. They scaled that mountain like nothing, over rocks, through crevices, fighting mud and slippery conditions. (Ok, it wasn't really that bad....) We did all we could to try to keep up. It wouldn't have been so bad if we had more water and if we'd takedn Exedrin before we started. Every day, I get headaches here from the altitude, but it was much worse while climbing in the heat all day.

Finally after about an hour and a half, we reached what I thought was our destination. Oh sweet victory. It was a beautiful view from the top. We could see our entire valley as well as the neighboring one, and the northern part of Quito too. We sat at a little refuge gazebo, had some snacks while a few of the friends mounted a horse in the field and took pictures. We were only there for a few minutes, when they started to yell for us to get going again. We weren’t even half way there.

Long story, short: We did indeed make it all the way to the other mountain, our legs screaming, our lungs stretched to capacity and a feeling of serious dehydration. The altitude headache we’d started with was now a mixture of altitude, dehydration, and exhaustion. We rested for about an hour before descending, although everyone was in a hurry to get down, as we’d all run out of water. Again, the view was, dare I say it, worth it. The air, although thin was clear, clean and smelled fresh. What ever that smells like, there it was. Fresh smelling fresh air.

I don’t know which was worse, up or down. Less exhausting going down, but after about 5 minutes, our knees where killing us. Some were trying to go down backwards, some sideways, it was tough. Our toes were smashed into the ends of our toes, some dripping blood through the shoes (ok, that’s not true either, but it felt like it could be true!)

Once we reached the bottom, we walked along the cobble stone streets, looking for a place to buy water. We finally found a place, and everyone went into the little house/tienda to buy as much water as we could get our hands on. I bought two bottles and a bottle of aspirin for my spiraling headache. Everyone was standing around the front of the store in the sun enjoying there water. Halfway through my bottled water, I saw some brown squiggly things in my peripheral. I stopped drinking and realized that they were in my water! My water bottle was filled with them! Ew. I ran over to Rodrigo and asked what it was and if I was going to die. He said it couldn’t be good and said I should change it for another one. Yeah thanks, I knew that.
I asked another brother and he started laughing, because apparently, this particular brand of water is a sham. It has an address of the bottling plant on the back that doesn’t even exist. All it is is the local water bottled to look filtered. Every one was laughing and wondering why I had bought bad water. Well, no one told me! I thought bottled water was bottled water. Anyway, after calming my gag reflex, they told me I’d be fine and I shouldn’t worry. I believed them and felt better, although wondering what the little squigglies were doing…right…now...in my stomache.

Turns out Hannah bought the same brand and drank the whole thing, although she had checked and it looked pretty clear at least. We’ll take some grapefruit seed extract and call it lesson learned.

The brothers said we needed to hire a truck to take us back to Tumbaco, as we now were in the other valley, so we walked through the town asking all the truck drivers if they wanted to make some money by taking all 17 of us to Tumbaco in the back of his truck. We got no takers, so we ended up walking ever further to find a bus. Longest bus ride of my life. From one valley to another, it’s a lot of turns, ups and downs, stopping for cattle, etc… I so badly wanted to get home, shower, eat, take Excedrin, soak my poor feet and go to bed for ever. We finally get off the bus an hour later, and are all standing around, saying how great it was and how cool and fun and awesome and what should we do now. You know what they said? “Hey, lets go to the field at Erica’s house and play Futbol.” OK, these people are officially bizarre. We obviously declined, stuffed ourselves into a taxi with 4 others who were also heading back to the K Hall to get their cars, and said our good byes. Everyone else went off to play futbol. (soccer)

In the end, maybe we should have waited a month or two before starting to hike here, but the scenery was worth it and the experience too.

In Sports News: Liga, Ecuador’s beloved Futbol club, won this week the Latin Cup. So everyone is in a good mood and talking about the game. Not only did it go in to double over time, but they had a final shoot out of sorts (sorry, don’t know the lingo of it in English) where they do back to back goal shots, one player against the goalie. The game went on so late, Hannah and I couldn’t stay up to watch it, but we followed every play and move, by the screams heard throughout the night. Imagine what it sounds like for an entire country full of people all screaming in unison every good shot and every good call. I bet you could hear it from the top of any mountain in Ecuador no matter where you are.