The first stop on our three day bike tour was the iconic Cotopaxi. Probably the best known volcano in Ecuador, Cotopaxi is the second highest peak in the country, but ubiquitous to Ecuadorian identity and history. We left early and arrived at the refuge swimming in clouds. The weather was a blessing and a curse; on the one hand you could not see any of the glacier, and the peak of Cotopaxi was completely covered by clouds. However that meant that there was very little wind, which is nice when you're freezing at 4600 meters (~15000 feet.)
The ride on this day began from the refuge, and went down the mountain into the national park. It was a very bumpy ride, lots of rocks and sand, but totally worth it. Cotopaxi National Park is beautiful, and going by bike is a great way to see it. Our guide took us away from all of the other tourists into a lesser visited area of the park. Here we peddled through 100 year old lahar's and got to experience the amazing landscape of the Andean Paramo. This was probably the toughest of all three days, just because of how technical the riding was. These bikes have shocks, but afterwards you will still have a soar butt and palms. Not to mention that riding a bike at such high altitude is no small feat. I imagine this is what it feels like for a smoker of 20 years to exercise.
I didn't take a ton of pictures, but here are a few of the highlights, of course you can see all of them on my Flickr.
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| Ready to go! |
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| Paramo |
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| This is a Lahar left from the last eruption of Cotopaxi. |
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| Here's the hostal where we stayed the night. |
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