Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Quito, 20th September 2006 - ENGLISH
Here we are in Quito, the first step of my adventure.
Right now I am at the Ecuador Military Geographic Institute (EIGM), the only authority in Ecuador that can release maps of the country. Unfortunately this is a necessary step as there is no other place where I can find the maps of the mountains that I am going to climb. Things are almost the same in the other countries of South America, a little easier in Argentina and Peru, much harder in Bolivia and Chile.
In a couple of hours I should get the maps of the three higher mountains of Ecuador: Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and Cayambe. The "smaller" of the three is Cayambe which is just under 6,000m (5,794 according to the last survey) and I will start with this climb. The funny thing is that even of those maps - which are the best available maps - there are plently of mistakes. They have been updated the last time in the 50's and since that time many things, as the profile of the glaciers, have been changing significantly.
The sense of anxiety that I carried with me during the last days is diluting, I start to feel as I am travelling since months. Quito, as any big south-american big city, is not the kind of place where one feels at home after a couple of hours. It is smoggy and dirty but at 2,800m of height is a convenient base where start to acclimatise to the altitude and set-up the logistics.
Well, if everything goes by the plan in about a week the pictures of Cayambe will be on the web.
Right now I am at the Ecuador Military Geographic Institute (EIGM), the only authority in Ecuador that can release maps of the country. Unfortunately this is a necessary step as there is no other place where I can find the maps of the mountains that I am going to climb. Things are almost the same in the other countries of South America, a little easier in Argentina and Peru, much harder in Bolivia and Chile.
In a couple of hours I should get the maps of the three higher mountains of Ecuador: Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and Cayambe. The "smaller" of the three is Cayambe which is just under 6,000m (5,794 according to the last survey) and I will start with this climb. The funny thing is that even of those maps - which are the best available maps - there are plently of mistakes. They have been updated the last time in the 50's and since that time many things, as the profile of the glaciers, have been changing significantly.
The sense of anxiety that I carried with me during the last days is diluting, I start to feel as I am travelling since months. Quito, as any big south-american big city, is not the kind of place where one feels at home after a couple of hours. It is smoggy and dirty but at 2,800m of height is a convenient base where start to acclimatise to the altitude and set-up the logistics.
Well, if everything goes by the plan in about a week the pictures of Cayambe will be on the web.
# posted by Silvio @ 4:42 PM 
