We reached Rumiloma just after noon yesterday. It’s sunny and warm, and it feels great to unpack and dry out wet, muddy gear. As usual, the staff fires the wood-burning stove in our room—totally unnecessary for the temperature, but ideal for gear-drying.
At 3 p.m., Ossy invited everyone up to his house to climb on the huge wall he built inside, drink beer, or just lounge and watch TV. It sounded fantastic, but I wasn’t about to surrender my chance to nap. I get three glorious hours. Shower! Collect staff-done laundry. Fortuna’s wheel is spinning up. Dinner is at 7, fantastic as always, if now a bit familiar.
I head down twenty minutes early and find the Chicos outside drinking wine. We talk about the trip so far and their plans to hike Kili in October. I show them photos from our Kili climb. After a relaxed dinner with the whole group (minus Ossy, who is dining with his mother), I turn in around 9:30 and sleep well—maybe nine hours.
The next day, we head for Coto Park, where we’ll stay at a hostel-style hotel for the night. On the way, Ossy breaks safe-dining protocol and brings us to a cluster of Quito food trucks. He recommends the sushi, which for a germaphobe like me is about as likely as cleaning the food-truck sidewalk with my tongue. Three Americans even older than Jeff and me sit at a nearby table. One man uses binoculars to survey the food trucks without engaging his legs. They leave a backpack carelessly on the ground, and I offer Jeff twenty bucks to grab it and run, then return it with a patronizing lecture about crime. He is bored, but not that bored.
Drive to Coto park
After a two-hour drive from Quito, we check into a pleasant hacienda called Chilcebamba.
We enjoy a group welcome drink—similar to the tea-and-clear-liquor shot we had at Pinsaquí—while Ossy reviews the plan for tomorrow. We’ll drive to the parking lot of the upper Coto hut, then carry everything we need for the climb on an hour-long hike (with a thousand-foot gain) to the hut itself.
Ossy explains that the Coto hut has only three big bunk rooms, and he expects a large number of other climbers, given the volcano’s popularity. If we’re lucky, we’ll all be crammed into one room. If not, we’ll be crammed in with strangers. At least there won’t be much gear underfoot, because everything must be hauled in and we’re only inside the hut for about seven hours—three or four hours less than the climb itself will take.
David A
Travels With Burma Jones 