It is 7 AM and the smell on the bus is strawberry flouride. Febreeze chemical stench masking vomit. On the way out of Cuenca I watch the city turn to suburbs, then from small pueblos to houses scattered among rock and rolling hills. We enter Cajas national park and follow the twisting road to the ranger station. Leif, Kelly and I set out for this hike as early as possible because the park is known to loose visitors in afternoon fog. The trails are rumored to be poorly marked. Compass skills are recommended.
The lake at the base of the ranger station is surrounded by intricate rock formations jutting out of light green hills. As we make our way on the sendero the morning sun pokes through the clouds and the green algae that dominates the lake is lit up. We walk through small forests with twisty, peeling red trees. Something out of fairytales. The ground is alternating between spongy wetland vegetation, rock and firm soil. Small streams feed the lake.
We get to a fork in the trail and the route that we want to take (to the top of a near by peak) is signed in the direction we just came from. There is a small trail heading up the peak, straight up. However this is the paramo and the tufts of tan grass are all separated by veins of brown dirt making trails appear everywhere. We continue up anyways and the trail becomes more obvious. Raising our feet high with each step our quads work hard to get us up the steep ascent. We are all breathing hard, we are at 4,000 meters (more than 13,000 feet). We are almost scrambling up the loose dirt and rock. I take a detour to boulder over a small rock. Leif goes bigger and climbs up short face. All along the hike up Leif and I spot great rock climbing potential. Decent boulders, huge walls.
We make it up to a ridge and the view of Cajas opens up. Spotting the landscape are tons of small lakes connected like a web by rocky stream beds. Green hills accented by sharp rock raise above the lakes like fingers to the sky. Past the small valleys of Cajas formed by glaciers we can glimse larger peaks, mountains in the distance. Blue sky lines the horizon in most directions.
The ridge is covered with boulders and the trail winds between and over them. Once at the cumbre we take a victory photo and find a boulder for lunch. As the meal of tuna and veggies sinks in, I have a lay down on the hot rock and cover my eyes from the sun.
On the descent the trail loses form, we find ourselves in the veins of the paramo with out a clear path. Instead of turning back we decide to go forward, to blaze through the unrelenting grasses and pricker bushes. Pretty much every piece of vegetation is spiky and the grass is slippery beneath our boots. A deer bounds away from us. We can see the road so we head over the hills in its direction. We squish through a small wetland, the ground giving way with each foot like a natural crash pad. I spot a family of very large tadpoles and we investigate for a moment.
Leif and I come to the edge of a small cliff but there seems to be a way down following a crumbily rock wall. With a hand on the wall and the other out for balance I half walk and half slide down the hill. The grass makes you slip, the rocks give way, and the dirt falls apart making it a difficult task to descend. But we make it down and into another wetland. The wetland floor is dotted with strange plants. Red fingers, tiny multicolored flowers.
Strangely we actually reconnect with the trail and follow it down a stream bed and through one of the small fairy tale forests to the lake. So we complete the hike with our requisite half an hour detour and get to the road to wait for a bus. After waiting for about twenty minutes, throwing rocks at the paint line on the road, a bus appears. And for no apparent reason it does not stop. So we wait for another hour. Leif and I boulder on a near by rock, we play add-on and try to create problems to work out.
No comments:
Post a Comment