Iliniza Norte!

Yesterday was a great day, we climbed Ilinizas Norte, a 16,800 ft peak! It was awesome!

It was a little bit in coming.... Steven ate some bad ceviche and that slowed us down for a couple of days due to the need to be close to a bathroom, then we thought we had transport from the hostle to the trailhead for $20 bucks only upon departure found out it was 50$ and had to bail on that. We biked on back roads, dirt and cobblestone to El Chuapi, the town closest to the trailhead. From there we found transport up for 8 bucks the next morning in a camionetta, a truck that locals uses for where busses dont go.
We had to help the driver pushstart the truck to get going in the morning, then halfway up we proceeded to stop at a farmers to get water for the radiator, then we couldnt make it up a muddy section due to the rear wheel drive despite several attemps. We backed out and took an alternate route and finally made it up to the trailhead.
The hiking was awesome. We had views of Cotopaxi to the east, a snow-covered volcano cone, and twin peaks ahead of us. We were both feeling the altitude at first, but after a couple of hours I guess we got used to it because the going got quite a bit easier. By the time we made it up to the snow we were moving pretty well, kickstepping and picking our route up the mountian. It was the first time for me hiking up a mountain through snow like this, it was surprising and cool how the snow keeps you on the steeper slopes and how you can pick your route up. (Steven kinda does this as he is the more expereinced one with this type of climbing)There was some scrambling around to get to the top, and we were there! It was such a great experience... we are so lucky to be able to do what we are doing.
On the way down we took a different route and "skiied" down a snow field making for a very fast descent. As it turns out it was too fast, I got a brutal headache that lasted for several hours; lesson learned to go slower with these altitudes. Hiked throught alpine flower fields and back to the trailhead where our camionetta was waiting, he was there an hour earlier than we told him!
We are in the park of Cotopaxi now and are going to attempt to climb it tomorrow with a Kiwi that we met that has some mountaineering experience. We got all our gear and will head up from the refuge at midnight and hope to make it to the summit (somewhere around 19,000 I think) by dawn. Im super psyched!