On Sunday morning, we went to Quito’s historic center for Mass at the Basílica de San Francisco. In the US, I’ve often walked into a church with a friend, they’ve mentioned how pretty the church is, and my response has always been “meh, it’s fine”. Churches in Ecuador, especially Quito, are the reason why. If you grew up going to churches that are entirely covered in gold leaf, you’d also think the prettiest churches in the US are just fine. Though the basilica where my friend got married in Milwaukee was actually really beautiful, so amazing churches do exist in the US.

The San Francisco church isn’t even the prettiest church in Quito. We tried to get into La Compñía de Jesús, the church that’s considered the prettiest in the city, but they weren’t allowing tourists to enter until 12:30 pm, when we’d already be gone. So we walked around the historic center a little more, saw the cathedral, and saw the Basilica del Voto Nacional, a neo-gothic basilica, from afar. Then we went back to our Airbnb to pack up and drive 2 hours to Cotopaxi National Park.

Unfortunately, the Cotopaxi volcano was covered in clouds, so we weren’t able to see it, but we still had quite an adventure at the park. The visitor center of the park is at 12,500 ft. We drove past it with the intention of hiking up to the José Rivas Refuge, which is at 15,900 ft. Most of the park roads are unpaved, and the closer you get to the trailhead, the worse the roads are. There were holes and huge bumps and it was all dirt, so if you didn’t know how to drive through the bumps, your tires would spin and you’d get nowhere. Luckily, I was with Monica, who is an expert at driving in snow. And luckily, the tricks that work in snow also work on dirt roads. She told me to swerve left and right to catch the bumps at an angle. That worked. Our car was very dirty, but we were able to get all the way to the trailhead parking lot when many cars had to turn back.

Earlier in the week, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to hike the 8 mi around Laguna Cuicocha, but on Sunday, I was convinced that I’d be able to hike the 700 ft from the parking lot up to the refuge. It was only 1.5 mi roundtrip. I can totally do that, right? Wrong. It turns out that at 15,000 ft, I can either breathe or walk. I can’t do both. I’d take 10 steps and then I’d have to stop to catch my breath for a minute or two. I probably could have made it up eventually, after a few hours of taking 10 steps and breaking to breathe. Monica for sure would have been able to. But it was cold and windy and I could barely breathe, so we decided to call it a day and go back to the car after 20 or 30 steps. Even though it was cloudy and we didn’t see the Cotopaxi and we didn’t hike up to the refuge, the adventure was worth it. Monica drove us back down to give me a break. Then she drove us the 3 hours to Mindo, our final destination on our Andes mountains trip.