Cotopaxi here we come

Is now the 18th and we met our guide Marco. By now we are so excited that it is hard to sleep.

We drive in a 4x4 through really remote tracks and enter the Cotopaxi National Park, for both of us climbing Cotopaxi is more important than Chimborazo. There is something pretty appealing about standing in the open crater of a volcano. After a while we enter the Páramo, a barren landscape in which the only vegetation is very coarse grass that is used in the area to

build the house roofs. The terrain is sandy-ashy from the remains of the rivers of lava that once covered this land.

Marco, our guide quickly set us at ease, he climbed Cotopaxi more than 80 times and his response to our questions as to whether we were well acclimatised was that the most important thing was to be relaxed. Marco is a very experienced mountaineer who was a member of the Ecuatorian Mountain Rescue Team.

Best present ever - straw bale!!!

We stopped for lunch in a traditionally built house and you can see Kath's delight at discovering that it was a straw bale construction (OMG), we are stopping here after the climb and I can imagine Kath will need an extra memory card for her camera!!!

The walk to the refuge from the car park was steep but short, although at 4,800 mt breathing becomes harder. Finally we were able to get the very first glimpse of the full mountain albeit in the mist

Cotopaxi in the mist

The first thing we did when we got to the refuge was walking to the glazier to practice walking with crampons and stopping ourselves from free falling with our ice picks, all very exciting. The plan was that we would go to bed at 6.30pm after pushing some dinner inside us, get up at 10.30 and start walking by midnight. It's all very real now and we are quite nervous.

Unbelievably, we managed to get a couple of hours sleep and as planned we set off at  midnight. The night sky was extraordinary, I´ve never seen so many stars - the Milky Way could be seen clearly as could a miriad of shooting stars. The light of our head torches made the snow and ice sparkle. It was really hard work but worth every step of the way. Behind us in the distance we could see other climbers like a little row of fairy lights. Marco set the pace and was constantly checking the condition of the snow, avalanches are not uncommon in this mountains and every year they claim climbers lives. We felt totally safe with him, his technical knowledge as well as the knowledge of the Ecuatorian mountains is second to none. We crossed crevasses through ice bridges and saw massive ice waterfalls and other incredible ice formations under the lights of our torches. Such a shame we couldn´t take pictures we would love to share them with you!

See the crater behind

The number of people continuing to the top was diminishing as some of the climbers turned back. Truth to be said it is the hardest physical thing either of us has ever done. After 10 hours of strenuous walking, including some long 45 degree slopes, we made it to the top. The feeling is undescribable, suffice to say that we both burst into tears, a dream come true. The view of the crater, fire and ice together, sulphur plumes of smoke raising from the depths, nothing we can say can describe it

Kept this one large to show the incline we just climbed down

We didn't stay long in the top as we still had a very long descent some of it pretty steep. This is Marco coming down after he had secure us down with the ropes.

Marco making sure all is in order

The whole day took fifteen and a half strenuous hours worth every single second just to be on top of a volcano 5897 mt high. Just want to leave you with some photos to try to share in a small way what we saw and experienced in the summit.