After due consideration, and without sacrificing too much from our pre-existing itinerary, I suggested taking a QTVR of the highest point on the equator -- on the flanks of Volcan Cayambe, between Quito and Otavalo. Who knew what the view would be like? An empty meadow? A rocky ridge? A panorama of the mountain's glaciers and distant peak, or a much-scribbled upon memorial stone? It seemed worth a shot, if for no other reason than it was a TerraQuesty thing to do. But upon arrival in Quito earlier this week, another concern reared its head: if we were to shoot a 360 panorama in the middle of a cloud, or whiteout, or even a drizzle or downpour, some of the impact would definitely be lost.

After the rest of the week fell more or less into place, and Rocco's initial stories for 24 Hours seemed to be shaping up, we turned our attention to the Cayambe shoot. It turned out there were no buses up there; no taxis; no bilingual signs pointing the way to a point that was little more than a factoid, albeit a "cool" one. I rang up Dolores at Quasar Nautica, our host for the Virtual Galapagos event, and outlined our problem. She transferred me over to Marco, who warned me I might need a 4-wheel drive vehicle, as there had been some problems in the road. But in less than an hour he had lined us up with that 4-wheel drive, and an Andean mountain guide at the wheel.

So it is today, C-Day, February 8th. I wake after only four hours of sleep, in the middle of a dream where I think I'm traveling, but am only dreaming. All we have to worry about, as often is the case, is the weather. Somehow we've got to get up to the Volcano, find the route to the high point, hope we can make the trek -- at over 15,000 feet, where the air is thin and the conditions mutable -- rig up the tripod and 360 head in that cold and that thin air, and hope we can get a good shot. And, of course, make it back to Quito in time for yet another meeting, process the digital photography, write a dispatch and file to both TerraQuest and 24 Hours. Hey, piece of cake.

Volcan Cayambe is the northernmost of eight major active volcanoes that stitch along Ecuador's Andean spine. At 19,107 feet (5708 meters) it's the country's third highest peak, and like most of the other mountains in Ecuador it was first climbed by Edward Whymper, conqueror of the Matterhorn. The author of the still-a-good-read "Travels Among the Great Andes of the Equator" (1892) was already a celebrated Alpinist when he came to South America in search of even higher unclimbed peaks, in 1879. After knocking off Chimborazo -- Ecuador's crown at 20,823 feet (6310 meters) -- Whymper turned his sights on lesser peaks such as Cayambe. His 1882 ascent was marked by a peculiar geophysical anomaly: the trek began in the southern hemisphere, and concluded with a successful summitting in the northern. And the route he forged-- the Whymper Route -- became our goal.

These days, as happens, you can go into any one of dozens of tourist offices in Quito, hire a guide for a day or two, drive to Cotopaxi or Chimborazo or Cayambe, and knock the bastard off (in Edmund Hillary's immortal phrase). Nonetheless there is magic in the Andes, and as we drove with Julio Mesias of Guias de Montana (with an enye, not like the state) in his Russian-built Nivas 1800 4-wheel drive out of the village of Cayambe, some of that magic began to take hold, even as the mist fell out of the white sky and the low clouds only rose as we did, refusing to lift altogether.

The higher we rose along the cobbled and pot-holed road, the more the scenery took on a life of its own. Streams seemed to erupt at every bend in the way; a grove of eucalyptus swept up a canyon toward us, emissaries from another continent; bulls and cows grazed passively in the damp grass, apparently oblivious to the dramatic vistas of deep canyon behind them. "We're in the Andes," I found my self saying to myself, as if this was a great discovery, "we're in the Andes." I remembered the powerful impact of the paintings of Frederick Church, the last great painter of the Hudson River school, whose fabulous canvases gripped the imagination of America and Europe in the 1860s. With the exception of Aconcagua, the highest point in the world's longest mountain range, Ecuador itself is host to the tallest of the Andean peaks, and it is Cotopaxi that is portrayed in Church's most famous work, "The Heart of the Andes." While the flutes and guitars on Julio's tape deck played "El Condor Pasa" (over and over again), it began to sink in that Ecuador is the heart of the Andes -- not Peru, or Bolivia, or Chile, but Ecuador.

Just when my transport began to get the better of me, I heard Julio mutter, "Oh, this must be it." A deep black river of mud spilled out of the verdure and washed over the road, blocking our further progress. Disbelieving, we climbed out of the Nivas. It was apparently several days old, and others had clearly tried to drive into it, and given up within three meters. The mud was more than just an inconvenience, it was crevassed and twisted and pooled and convoluted, like a tectonic movement with no theory to organize it. We climbed up on top of its black back, slipped back, climbed up again. The tiny Nivas was dwarfed by the landslide, a road block on the information superhighway. Reluctantly, I came to the sodden realization that our anticipated signature TerraQuest feature, a QTVR panoramic at the equator's highest point on earth, was be impossible, today at least.

We sighed a deep sigh of disappointment, turned our backs on the Cool Site of the Day, and drove back off the mountain.

-- Christian Kallen

 

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