Cotopaxi Drive, Hike, Bike

A classic day trip that can be booked from pretty much any tour operator in Quito for around $35. I went with Gulliver’s travel with Fernando as driver and guide (though there’s little or no guiding required.)

The GPS track starts at the official entrance of the park, where you pay a $10 entrance fee. After this, you drive all the way to the parking lot below the refuge.

It’s a relatively short climb to the refuge itself. Due to the altitude, not super easy, but not too hard either, though the scree and loose sand are a bit of a pain. Even if you’re out of shape, it should take you less than an hour to get there.

After this, there’s another short hike to the bottom of the glacier. This part is even easier: less steep and a more solid trail. There’s really no reason not to do it. The scenery is amazing and makes you want to go all to the summit (which requires standard mountaineering equipment.)

After a lunch at the refuge, we went back down to the parking lot and brought out the mountain bikes for a 7 mile ride down to a lake over the same dirt track that leads up to the refuge parking lot.

Going downhill is always fun, and made more challenging by, well, a really crappy bike that made it impossible to really bomb down: try flying over a washboard surface with just 1cm travel on the front suspension. The vibrations were hurting more than just my arms. (The Biking Dutchman, another Quito travel agent, supposedly has high quality bikes.)

A day of good fun and, thanks to the cooperating weather, great views.