StampCollector

Getting to the Quilotoa volcano was the easy bit.

We should have known that hiking 14km back to our hostel across rugged Andean terrain would be harder work than we had first anticipated. The crater itself was the kind of natural wonder that renders intelligent folk speechless – “Wow,” we said, again and again, with a depressing lack of critical insight – and we had reached it rather too easily, sat in the back of a pickup truck and driven along a wet and bumpy road to the volcano rim.

Our driver escorted us up to the crater rim, where our mouths duly fell open and I grasped longingly for my tripod, filters and ultra-wide lens, all the while keeping one eye on the evil bank of cloud hanging overhead. The day before had ended with landslides on the roads and an almighty 10-hour thunderstorm. The weather could strike at any time.

And then, with barely a wave of his hand to indicate where we should take the so-called “path” back to the little village of Chugchilan, Jose Luis was gone. We were alone, give or take a few indigenous women fetching and carrying 50-odd metres below us within the crater.

We looked around, smiling one and all. A hundred metres below us, the crater of Quilotoa was filled with a shimmering alkaline lake that left the shoreline a tinge of lurid green. The lake soaked up and reflected the mottled sunshine, the ever-changing cloudscape lending the lake surface a soft, spongy, evervescent look.

Eventually, after a quick bout of sunshine that changed the look of the lake once again, we headed off around the crater rim, searching for the path back to Chugchilan.

At first all was simple enough, even if the going was slow. At 3,850m, walking up and down the ridges of a volcano crater is tough work at the best of times. Progress was hampered, though, by the constant need to stop and admire the crater as we began to see it from new and ever-so-slightly different angles.

“Wow,” we said, almost in unison. “Wow.”

We struck left, off a sandbank and away from the rim. Heading downhill our lungs gorged on the precious oxygen and we raced through fields and past pretty local children.

By the time we reached a little hamlet that marked “midway” the rain was pelting down. Now, with several layers of plastic protecting me and my camera from the weather, photography was difficult, if not imposible. What happened next is documented only thanks to the sterling efforts of my companions, without whose pocket-sized digital cameras none of us would ever remember quite how hard the day became.

Following the detailed description in a reputable and well-known guidebook, we turned right and stopped dead. Ahead of us lay a canyon, a good 200 metres wide and 150 deep. On the other side, straight ahead, lay Chugchilan. The guidebook contained no mention of how to cross the gorge.

Three hours after setting out on a path down into the canyon, we emerged, sweating and shattered, on the far rim. There was still light in the sky, but there was a time, deep in the bowels of the crack, where we had all feared that we might need to spend the night in that wet, overgrown semi-jungle.

We took the wrong path. A path, yes, but probably an old and definitely an under-used one.

Without machetes, we were forced to clamber through hanging tree boughs and over wild bushes. We followed a small stream to meet a wider river, our feet sinking into pungent orange mud if we took a false step. We jumped across the big river, our hearts in our mouths, and hauled ourselves up sheer valley walls, using for grip and leverage the roots of plants that sliced our skin and left our hands bloody and wet.

Miraculously the worst of the weather held off until nightfall. One heavy downpour on our final ascent up the steep path hewn into the hillside and all would have been mud and chaos.

Caroline was, for most of the afternoon, a silent, semi-quivering wreck.

Our Livepudlian friend, Gary, looked assured enough, taking the lead and seeking the path, but he admitted on a series of videos he shot that we were at one point, and I quote, “Lost”. Our South African companion, Warren, did sterling service testing jumping points over rivers, not always with complete success.

Even at the end there were still more cracks in the earth to cross: two mini-canyons invisible from the top ridge of the main gorge, before we reached the warmth and comfort of our lodging.

And of course as we looked behind us we could clearly make out the snaking path we were supposed to have taken, winding down the far side of the canyon, well marked, well trodden.

Back in Chugchilan, it began to rain, heavily. An eager American couple arrived, keen to visit the crater the next day. They watched us strip off our boots, open our beers and heard us tell the story of our day. They exchanged glances.

“Wow,” they said, almost in unison. “We’ll take a guide.”

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