Ecuador: Parque Nacional Cajas

Photos here.

In our second week in Ecuador, we flew south from Quito to the lovely town of Cuenca (we'll have a separate post about that city some day). From Cuenca, we booked a tour to Parque Nacional Cajas, a highlands park notable for it's glacier-formed valleys, hundreds of lakes, and ancient "polylepis" forests.

We saw many cool birds, a bunny, hiked several the lagoons, and walked up to the second-highest point in the park, known as "Tres Cruces," where there is a memorial to the many Spaniards who died while trying to cross the Andes (elevation 13,670 ft.). Interestingly, Tres Cruces is also on the continental divide; which means every drop of water on one side of Tres Cruces flows toward the Pacific, while every drop that falls on the east side goes into the Amazonian basin (and then the south Atlantic).

Cajas' terrain is known as a "paramo" ... basically, high-elevation plains and bogs. It's actually quite similar to some of the terrain we saw above the tree line on the South Island of New Zealand:

From 28Mar07

Compare with Ecuador:

Pretty cool...

Ecuador: Cotopaxi

All the photos here.

We took a guided day trip from Quito to the nearby national park around the Cotopaxi volcano. The tour company drove us and a few others out to the park, where we would stop below the volcano, at the park's very small museum, and finally, part way up the volcano. From about 3900 m, we would begin a 2 hour walk up to the edge of the glacier at about 5000 m (16,400 ft)... this is probably the highest altitude we've ever hiked to! There is a hut/refuge about half way up the trail to the glacier, where you can get outfitted to do the actual ice climbing to the summit after the sun goes down. We stopped here for lunch on the way down, but the food was bad and there wasn't enough for vegetarians. After lunch, we walked back to the bus and took an 11 km (almost 7 mile) mountain bike ride down the volcano to a lagoon near the park entrance. We also saw an Andean wolf (which is really a fox) and milked a cow! All in all, a very fun tour.

Interesting after story: On another day, we ran in to a woman who recently quit from the tour company we used to go to Cotopaxi. She complained that they underpaid their guides, skimped on food, and treated her terribly. So.... for those of you looking for a particular tour company to use if for Cotopaxi, we can't really recommend one, even though we had a good trip with ours.

Barton Creek Greenbelt

A few weeks ago, we went out to the Barton Creek Green Belt (link goes to annotated map) for some light hiking. Enjoy the pics!

As far as a review goes, I'd have to say that I'm pretty pleased with the size and proximity of the green belt (I think seven nearly-uninterrupted miles within minutes of downtown Austin), but disappointed in how filthy the place can be. Citizens leave all kinds of litter everywhere and too many people fail to carry doggy bags (provided by the city at the trail heads, even!) so you have to be careful where you step. Also, mountain bikers blaze down the narrow trail, so keep your eyes & ears peeled. I could see spending a few more days exploring other sections of the trail, but only really because it's so close, not because it provides anything novel or isolating. I give the BCGB a 4 out of 10 on my random scale of park reviews, mostly because it's too crowded. Let me put it bluntly: if my little brother and his wife (both big outdoors/hiking folk) came to visit us, I probably wouldn't take them here. On the plus side, we did get to see a pair of black vultures up close, as they were shoulder-to-shoulder in a tree right beside the trail.

McKinney Falls State Park, Austin, TX

There's a nice state park a few minutes outside central Austin, and only minutes away from the 'burbs to the south-east of Austin called McKinney Falls State Park. It sounds lame, being so close to the city and under the airport-path, but desperate times called for desperate measures. To elaborate: We had just moved to Austin and were looking for an apartment while staying at the cheap and friendly Howard Johnson Hotel. Since our place wouldn't be ready for a few days, we decided to check out of the hotel and save a few bucks by camping at the park.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get to spend any time at the park except at night to sleep. I went to work in the day (remember, it's close to central Austin) and J hooked up with free wireless in various coffee shops around town to look for jobs.

So anyway, here's a new feature on the blog and my first review of a campground, hopefully with many more to come. There are over eighty campsites at McKinney Falls SP, and all of them have water, picnic tables, trees (huge bonus... ours had a massive live oak that covered our table and the spot where we pitched our REI Quarter Dome UL), fire pits/grills, and several have electrical hookups for you RV folks. The cost is quite high, over $20 a night, but the sites are big and are laid out well, most have lantern hooks/poles next to the tables, the bathrooms are immaculate (including the showers, which have free hot water). Reservations can be made at Reserve America (online) and there are a handful of walk-in spots, too (first come, first served); there are also group sites, if that's your thing.

On the two nights we stayed there (Wed. and Thurs. before Labour Day Weekend), we were the only people staying in our loop of campsites. Not even the park host was on duty those nights, so we simply picked out a spot right next to the bathrooms, pitched our tent, and had a nice meal before it started to rain a bit.

The park sits next to Onion Creek, and there's loads of hiking and biking trials there, as well as good fishing in the creek, so we've heard. There's an interpretive center, which is okay (the rangers were a bit surly when we were there) and a big campground fire pit/amphitheater thing.

The only thing that dampened our experience there is that on the first of the two nights we camped, it was about 90-degrees F at night and raining, which meant inside our puny backpacking tent, it was about 120-degrees F, damp, and smelly! I can't really fault the park for that -- it's really a problem with the Quarter Dome's design that it gets such poor ventilation when the rain-fly is fully battened down. On the second night, it was still warm at night, but we took the fly off and were able to sleep and cooled down as the night wore on, eventually getting down into the mid-70's, which was great.

If you're coming to Austin, and it's not summer, I highly recommend going out there. I know that J & I will be checking out the park again this fall when it cools down so we can check out the hiking trails, try out new gear, and get out of the city quickly. Which is one of the reasons I will choose to give the park a 7 out of 10: It's close enough to Austin to be used as a base of operations for exploring the city as a visitor (and MUCH cheaper than a hotel!) as well as a good place for an overnight or weekend escape (provided it's not a million degrees outside) for Austinites and it makes an easy day-retreat. The facilities are top-notch, but the reason it doesn't score higher than a 7 is because the rangers were surly and I plan on reserving 8's, 9's, and 10's for those campsites that are really spectacular AND serve as gateways to phenomenal outdoors activities (stuff that's way out of the way, has amazing views, etc.).

Park and Ride

Yesterday we rented this awesome orange hog (see below) and rode for two hours from Krabi Town up to a wildlife preserve where there's this gorgeous emerald-green pond made from underground hot springs (the water mixes with cold water on the way up, so the pool is quite refreshing). The water just leaks right out of the rocks and collects in this amazing pool. The walks around there were nice, but we hardly got to see any of it because we wanted to get home before it was dark. We failed in this attempt because it started to rain pretty hard before we made it back and we had to stop at a construction yard where there was shelter (and several other riders taking refuge!). The park is the only lowland forest park in all of southern Thailand, and the scenery was quite stunning. Today we're going out to the tiny island of Koh Jum, just south of Krabi, where we'll hopefully have our own beach. We'll keep you posted...

-mike