My first view of Chimborazo - wow!

I've been hoping to see Chimborazo, the largest volcano in Ecuador, for the past few days but it has been quite cloudy. Tom thought we'd probably see it on the drive to Simiatug and he was right. The higher we got, the clearer it became and finally the whole, massive mountain was on show.

At 6,268 metres (20,371ft), it is absolutely awe-inspiring. It hasn’t been active since 550CE but the results of its activity are all around. The surrounding high plateau is strewn with rocks and as you drive on roads where they have had to cut through or into the rock, you can clearly see strata of varying depths from eruption after eruption. It’s like the cross-section of a massive layer cake.

Chimborazo makes you stop in your tracks and, in a country where there are geological wonders everywhere, it has to be pretty amazing to stand out.

We started the drive from Ambato where we are at about 2,700m and crossed a high pass on a dirt road at around 4,200m before dropping down to Santa Domingo at 3,530m (11,500ft). You can see some video from the high part of the pass here. We met some gringos (Americans) on horses near the top.

The drive is a sensory overload from start to finish. From Ambato, you’re soon into countryside, quite lush with steep valleys and with lots of people selling produce at the side of the road. It’s an age-old opportunist sales technique and exactly how Stilton Cheese got started on the side of the A1. We stopped on one stretch where there were around eight sellers (all offering vegetables). We bought potatoes, beans, tomatoes and some fruit.

We also passed a community market set up on the bottom of a valley where there’s a tight bend and some parking. I guess people have to slow down for the bend and can park up if they see something interesting. This sells everything, including meat. Fresh mutton would be cut off a sheep (recently butchered) and hanging from a convenient road sign – did that say “bend ahead” or “dead sheep”?

There are lots of trucks on the road and they don’t seem to worry too much about where they overtake. Driving can sometimes feel a little dangerous: click here. 

In one valley, there’s the home of Mushuc Runa FC, the football team of the indigenous people. Mushuc Runa means “new man” in Quechua and they get big crowds. The stadium is reached down a steep dirt road (I don’t think you’d get the Arsenal team bus down there) and on match day everyone parks on the main road, which is also steep and narrow, but at least is tarmac. Apparently, the man who owns Mushuc Runa heads the local produce co-operative and has two wives (sisters) who live in houses next door to each other just down the road. They are very nice houses by the local standard and I thought the one higher up the road was a bit nicer (she must have been the top sister). This local gossip, by the way comes courtesy of Jorge, who knows what’s going on around here.

You can’t believe how big Chimborazo is, pictures don’t do it justice. No wonder people decided these volcanoes were gods or the homes of gods.

We turned off a good road onto a dirt track to cross a mountain pass. The road wasn’t too bad (no need to engage 4WD today), but it can get tricky in bad weather. I’m not comfortable giving the car such a hammering and would have slowed down a bit, but the Mitsubishi Montera (now 19 years old) seems well suited to such an environment. It’s a V6 2.7-litre petrol and isn’t very economical, although petrol is only $1.83 per gallon – less than 40p per litre. Lucy was getting a bit shaken in the back and gets painful contractions with the rough road.

We came off the dirt road onto a metalled surface and then turned off again onto a dirt track to Santa Domingo.

Santa Domingo is 3530m (11,500ft) and it’s hard to breathe once you start ding anything physical such as climbing the stairs. The centre of the community is a church and square, surrounded on three sides by school, church, cheese factory and the abandoned furniture factory where Tom and Lucy got accommodation. The central square has pigs running around, dogs and llamas. In the morning, people bring milk to the cheese factory from surrounding smallholdings, they arrive with two plastic cans strapped each side of a llama.

We walked down to the nursery (you get free nursery care in the high Andes) where children were playing out. Lots of them know Tom, Julia and Aureliano. The toys are worn out and play equipment is old tyres and logs. There’s a steel climbing frame and some plastic slides which all went flying when there was a blast of wind.

The rooms they have been using are above the old furniture factory. There’s a big room which they have used as a playroom. It was the old school and when they went in the last lesson was still chalked up on the blackboard (quite spooky). They also have a living room/kitchen warmed by a wood stove, where there’s a sink, fridge and gas hob; large table with benches and two settees. They have a bathroom and large bedroom which had two doubles and a single bed. It’s warm enough when the stove is lit, but very cold without it (and in the other rooms). Drinking water is from an office-style water cooler, milk is bought from the cheese factory each day and has to be boiled before use.

A local man had set up an interview for Lucy with his 90-plus mother, who had direct experience of the Simiatug uprising and the seizing of the land from the hacienda owners. She was able to give Lucy a first-hand account (she lives on her own over 3,500m in a hut with her animals) and in exchange for helping set up the interview, Lucy had promised her son a copy of the video, so we set off to take it to him in the nearby town of Salinas.

It’s a drive of about 45 minutes and Salinas is a pretty place with a central square and busy streets. It’s also quite industrious, making cheese and an orange liqueur among other things. We bought some cheese and chocolate. The man we were to deliver the video to lived further up the valley from Salinas, along quite a narrow rough road. He wasn’t there, but Lucy left the data stick with his wife. It seems odd to leave a piece of modern technology with a woman in a rural shack, but why not?

We were back before dark and enjoyed a nice meal of beef, potatoes and onions cooked on the wood burner. I wanted to go out to see the night sky, but there were three sodium lights in the main square, so light pollution was worse than Thorney. It was also very cold and blowing a gale, so I wasn’t tempted to venture away from the community.