Mom, you might not want to read this

Apparently I arrived in Shell just at the right time. I guess several of the other college-age volunteers here hadn't been on a getaway in a couple months, so they planned to take a trip up to see Al Altar (one of the snowcapped mountains around here) this past weekend. We took off Friday at 6 pm with 7 volunteers and 3 Ecuadorians in Rodrigo's (one of the Ecuadorians) family truck. We strapped a tarp over the bed of the truck so we could ride in the back without freezing or getting rained on. The first picture I have is of us when we arrived in the nearby town, Baños. (I left the shutter open a long time and took this without a flash, so that's why anything that wasn't stationary looks blurry). At this point in our trip, everything seemed to going generally pretty well.

In Baños, we diverted from the main road to Quito and began heading toward Al Altar. Now, apparently Rodrigo didn't quite have complete directions, as we must have made about 3 or 4 wrong turns, and we backtracked quite often. Eventually one of our girls remembered she had a tourist guide which had some vague directions on how to get to Al Altar. However, we still only had a general sense of direction. After going a little while longer, our guys stopped and asked a lady which way to go, but again they only got a general sense, not the clear-cut directions we would have liked.

Now, like I said, we had 10 people in this tiny truck, and we were driving up mountains. Eventually, the truck began stalling as we were trying to head up the mountains. And to make matters worse, the battery was dead (alternator problem/wire loose?), so we had to push the truck and pop the clutch to get it going again, which of course couldn't happen while we were going uphill. Eventually, the truck was stalling so much that we were holding on to the back of the truck and then jumping out and pushing whenever the truck began to have problems. Now, at 9,000 feet, this was no easy task. We were all getting quite tired. And we still had little clue where we were.

Eventually, we had had enough pushing and aimless wandering. We stopped by a house on the side of the road and asked for directions. At this point, it was about midnight. There ended being to men in the house who offered to take us to Al Altar for $40. We were pretty sure we would never make it ourselves, so we accepted the offer. We then jumped into the back of his big truck while Rodrigo drove his truck without the extra weight. It turned out that we were actually quite close. We were on the next mountain over. Please sense my sarcasm. We finally arrived at the Hostel at 1:30 in the morning, where we met up with one of the other volunteers who had been on a medical caravan all last week.

The Hostel itself was beautiful inside. We generally tried to sleep, but many couldn't because it was so cold. It was about 50 degrees inside, and the blankets weren't very warm. Being the fresh meat from Michigan, I didn't have too much trouble sleeping for a few hours. In the morning we had breakfast and then got ready to go. Unfortunately, there was a little miscommunication about the price, and also we had more people than they were expecting, so they didn't have enough mules ready. Unfortunately, our Ecuadorian friends didn't feel they could afford the trip, so they decided to head back to Shell, leaving 8 of us to head to Al Altar on our pack mules.

These mules were amazing. They put up with us on their backs for 3 hours, climbing up steep hills and through extremely deep mud, trekking on in low O2. The ride was a little scary because often we were right on the edge of the mountainside. The especially scary part was when the mules would randomly try to fight for position. I have no clue why. During the trip, we were continually moving in and out of clouds. It was getting colder as we went, but it didn't start raining until we were fairly close to the refuge where we would leave our mules behind and head for Al Altar on foot. At that time, it was so cold that we could actually see our breath inside the refuge.

The hike to Al Altar was about 2 to 3 miles and about 1000 feet up. As we took off, we were worried that the clouds would obstruct any view we might have. Al Altar was at one time a volcano, and we were climbing up to the edge of it, what is now a water-filled lagoon. The hike up was rather difficult, at around 13,000 feet with several steep elevations. Only 5 of us actually made it to the lagoon. It rained a little on our way up, but as we neared the lagoon the sun actually came out a bit. In fact, the sun was so intense that I ended up taking off my jacket and fleece.

Up until now, we had continually been marveling at the beauty around us. However, at one point, we turned a corner and I was speechless. It was one of the most beautiful sites I had ever seen. And as the clouds rolled in or cleared up, it only got better. Al Altar was gorgeous. The last picture is of me on the other side from the lagoon, with Al Altar in the background. (I promise it’s not just a backdrop! I was there!) The elevation where we were was about 13,400 feet, with barometric pressure of only 18 in mg (456 mmHg, 0.6 Atm).

We were only at the lagoon for about 30 minutes, but in that short time the clouds began to roll in again. As we took off, we realized that it would be easy to come all the way there and stay several hours without seeing the snowcapped peaks. We felt very blessed.

We got back to the refuge around 4pm and still had a 3 hour ride ahead of us. On the way back, I don’t know what got into the mules, but they began to vie for position even more, and they were even kicking quite a bit. Several of us got kicked to some extent or another. It was also a bit scary when they would try to run ahead and pass another mule when were on the edge of a cliff. For some reason, I don’t think a trip like this would be allowed in the States, especially without signing our lives away. Shortly into our ride home, it began raining. Furthermore, since we left around 4, we were fighting daylight. (Remember that Ecuador is on the equator, so the sun consistently rises and sets at 6am and 6pm.) I was mostly worried about the end of the trip back since that was when we knew we’d have the worst downhills. I was very impressed with our mules, as they generally managed to stay on all fours, sticking out their front legs as they’d slide down the muddy hills.

Not 10 minutes after we arrived back at the barn, the sun had completely set and it was dark again. We were all soaked through, and hardly any of us had much more to wear. Thankfully, we were able to start a fire in the Hostel’s chimney to warm up a little bit before taking off again. Since Rodrigo and his friends had already left, we took a camioneta (a truck with the back open for chickens, hay, or passengers) to the bus stop, where we were told the bus would be arriving 30 minutes later, at 9:30. There was a nearby restaurant, so we went over there to have some hot drinks since we were still a bit cold. While sipping our tea, we began talking to the waiter who told us the bus would not be coming until 12:30. We could try to get another camioneta, but it would cost another $15, and it would only bring us to Baños, where we would have to catch a bus to Shell anyway. We decided to wait. The bus did eventually come at 12:50, and we took it to Shell. I arrived back at my house at 3am, tired and ready for bed.

It had been an incredible adventure. It seemed that anything that could go wrong did go wrong (even worse than any youth trip I’ve been on, including Dawntreader 2000). However, I also saw God working out everything in the end. It seemed to be a lesson in trust, something I’m learning a lot these days.