Barely Breathing

Day: 358

I can barely breath, my lungs are burning and screaming for the thin air with the scant amount of oxygen it contains. I’m now sitting at 5000 meters (16,500feet) and wonder if it might have been a better idea to stay with Felicia at the refuge and drink hot chocolate, about 200 meters down where here lungs lost their breath,

The Swede next to me looks over and smiles, “It makes you you feel alive, huh?”

I give her a wheeze in response and try to hold my footing on this snow cover glacier, sitting on the worlds highest active volcano. The trail we had been lead up was barely more than a few footprints in the side of a steep slope, for a moment I was worried, one missed step and I would look like one of those cartoon snowballs tumbling down the side of a mountain, getting bigger and bigger until I finally crash into something, the snow would explode and I’d see stars. I carefully choose my steps and try to make my way back to were we had eaten lunch without dying.

The girl at the counter in our hostal wasn’t quite honest in what this tour entailed, we were told the tour was primarily about riding mountain bikes down the side of Cotapaxi, with a short walk around the parking lot, and on the nearby glacier. She made it sound simple, although I know even in an oxygen rich environment a 1600 feet gain over a 1 1/2 miles is hard; here I felt my lungs bleed (possibly). I am relatively sure she just wanted our commission, and doesn’t really care about tourists.

I finally, and safely, made it back to Felicia and we began our decent the other 300 scree covered meters to the parking lot. When we arrived, throughly exhausted, our guide was pulling the bikes off the trailer and ranting about how we need “much careful, on corners” less we could just lose the road and tumble forever down the side of Cotapaxi. Even in my state, I smiled excitedly, as I would with anything concerning bikes, and found the biggest looking bike I could. I helped adjust the seat on Felicia’s bike and we were off.

Jarring, fast, scary, intense, are just some words that come to mind as I hung on for dear life and flew down the bumpy volcano. Then about halfway down I glanced back to check on her and all I saw was a cloud of dust and Felicia laying on the ground.

Fuck.

I ran up to check on her, she seemed a little bruised up, and jammed her thumb pretty badly, but she shook it off and climbed back on. She lasted another mile or so before she ate shit again and called it a day. Our guide who was following with the land rover and trailer picked her up and I took off by myself to catch up with the rest of our group. The next few miles flew by, as I passed everyone else and had nothing shy of 4 near death experiences, finally I was sitting on the valley floor and pedaling to the nearby lake we were to meet at.

Even bruised up, Felicia was in a good mood as I showed up dripping sweat and smiling that I was still alive (possibly the reason for her good mood). After a short recovery period, we all piled back in the Land Cruiser and drove back to the hostal. I barely made it to 8:3pm before I was asleep.