An adventure
Senior Liam O'Sullivan vlogs about his two weeks in Ecuador.
The morning we took on Chimborazo, a gigantic volcano standing at 20,000 feet in the Andes of Ecuador. It was perhaps one of the most jarring experiences of the trip thus far.
We started off the morning walking down a path to a cultural center, where we would be eating a breakfast kindly prepared for us by locals. While on our way down, we turned around to look at some cattle and were struck by something in the distance: a snowy mountain peeking out of the clouds and dominating the view of the sky.
Despite having arrived there the day before, this was our first time seeing the volcano itself. Because of the varying climates of Ecuador and the constantly changing weather, the sky can be rainy and full of clouds one moment and clear and sunny the next. When you’re up in the mountains, this leads to many hidden gems (or gigantic volcanoes) that disappear and reappear every few minutes or so.
The next jarring experience was the hike up the actual volcano itself later that day. Adjusting to the altitude is incredibly difficult. Just standing up can leave you lightheaded from the lack of oxygen and pressure in the air. The higher up the mountain you hike, the more you lose your breath, gain a pounding headache and have to stop to take a break every 10 feet or so. Despite the difficulties, just being able to step onto the mountain itself is a special experience we will not forget anytime soon.
It’s important to take the time to stop in moments like these. It’s hard to comprehend places like Chimborazo because its beauty is so striking, and it is so much bigger than ourselves. Capturing its grandeur on camera becomes an impossible feat when it’s difficult to comprehend even by looking at it with our own eyes. It’s an important lesson in appreciation and understanding of our earth and how much greater it is than ourselves.
Chimborazo has been around for billions of years before us and created such amazing structures and sights to admire, and it will continue to be long after we are gone (if we don’t mess it up too much). As humans, it is a humbling experience to know that we are so small and short-lived in the grand scheme of it all, especially in special moments like these.