Cotopaxi

Saturday (1/17) we left for our weekend excursion! On our way to the small indigenous town we were staying in (Huasalata), we "stopped" (for many hours) at Cotopaxi national park, it's a biiiig ol' volcano. Unfortunately, it was extremely foggy outside, so we couldn't see the mountain, or the view once we went on the road up the mountain.

In our fun little bus we bounced along the dirt roads in the park, and eventually we got high up on the volcano, where there's snow! We came to a point where it was too hard to keep going up, because of the snow on the road, so we all got out and walked around and had some snowball fights :) You could hardly see anything, just white everywhere. We also saw some alpacas ( i think, maybe llamas) in the park down on the ground, where there wasn't any snow.

After going up the mountain we had lunch at the restaurant by the entrance to the park, and i tried te de coca (coca leaf tea), which tastes a lot like mate (from argentina) or a little like green tea. We also had soup, and then we made amazing sandwiches with lots of food that Maria Teresa (coordinator) brought. There were tomatoes, lettuce, avocados, cucumbers, ham, and all sorts of other good stuff. Then we kept going on our way to Huasalata, thankful to be able to sleep a bit in the van because we were back on paved roads :)

To be continued!....