"You can never conquer a mountain. You can only conquer yourself" - James Whittaker
The past week I had spent in Riobamba, a settlement rich in history located at the foot of the Chimborazo volcano, a mountain of over 6300 meters. Due to the bulge at the equator, Chimborazo is the furthest point from the center of the earth and, therefore, the closest point to the sun. The volcano attracts many mountain climbers as the climb offers amazing views of the Ecuadorian Andes. However, everyone climbs at his own risk as Chimborazo is still an active volcano - the last eruption occured in 2006 and destroyed many indigenous settlements in the area.
We left Quito early Friday morning and made our first stop three hours later at a house of an indigenous shaman. He showed us his small farm with a garden of native Ecuadorian herbs and a few skinny goats, pigs, and cuys (guiney pigs, a delicacy in Ecuador). He also showed us how to make shampoo out of the aloe roots - he beat the roots with a stone, rubbed them together vigorously, and then the mixture became shampoo. The things one can make with a simple plant root are pretty amazing. To end our tour, the shaman offered to cleanse the energy of one volunteer in our group. After a few minutes of nervous silence, a brave soul volunteered for the procedure. She walked in a cross over a bowl with a burning flame and stopped in front of the shaman. He blessed her with tree branches and spit aloe vera juice in her face. We left the shaman's house and continued on to our hotel in Riobamba where we got lunch and had a city tour.
Even though Riobamba is one of the five biggest cities in Ecuador, the place is more a relic of history than a booming city of modernity. There are some museums, churches, and a beautiful colonial center but not much else. Honestly, I liked Quito much better. We finished our city tour and went to sleep early to be ready in the morning to scale the Chimborazo.
Next morning we left our hotel at 8:30 a.m. and rode up the windy mountain road to the towering volcano of ice and clouds. We got out at the first shelter at 4200 meters and, after the ritual partaking of coca tea, began the arduous climb to the second shelter at 5000 meters. The short climb took almost an hour of covering the distance step by step and many rests. The towering peak of Chimborazo, hidden behind an ocean of clouds, laughed at our puny efforts to conquer it. On our trek up the mountain I talked to the guide and learned an interesting indigenous legend of the mountain. Apparently, Chimborazo is a god in indigenous mythology and its mate is called Cotopaxi, another volcano nearby. One day many, many centuries ago Chimborazo caught Cotopaxi with somebody else and, in anger, turned her into a mountain. However, he did not want to live without her, and he himself turned into a mountain. The indigenous people in the area go to Chimborazo in order to cleanse their energies and to ask the god for favors - there are ruins of the indigenous temples in Chimborazo, but they are on the other side of the mountain and very hard to reach.
We reached the second shelter of Chimborazo and went a little further to maybe 5200 meters, but we had to return to the bus. I was slightly dissapointed - I really wanted to climb to the top. Chimborazo is a good mountain to climb for beginners - it does not require any special equipment, and a climber can just hike to the top if properly acclimatized. One day I want to come back and reach the top of Chimborazo - a hike of approximately seven hours. We came back down (a lot harder than coming up because of the strong wind hitting the back) and proceeded to the next stop on our journey - the visit with the last ice merchant of Ecuador.
Once upon a time all the ice in Ecuador was provided by the ice merchants - indigenous men who went up the Chimborazo volcano to mine ice at the top. They climbed to the top of the mountain everyday, broke off blocks of ice from the glaciers, rolled them up in hay to prevent melting, and brought ice down to the market to sell it. Over time the practice died out as ice became a factory-sold commodity and today there is only one ice merchant in Ecuador - Balthazar. We visited his house high up in the Andes and met him and his family. The man is over seventy years old, but still he climbs the Chimborazo twice a week and brings ice down to the supermarket. He can't make much money because he can't compete with the prices of factory-produced ice, but he still persists in this centuries-old tradition. Meeting Balthazar was a fascinating experience for me - he is a part of ancient history that refuses to bow down to the demands of modernity and resists change in his lifestyle passed down to him by his ancestors.
Going back to the hotel from Balthazar's house, I had much food for thought as I stared at the patchwork quilts of green and yellow mountains. I thought about how important is the respect for yourself and who you are in this world. Like one of the three biblical magi that granted gifts to baby Jesus (the name Balthazar is a biblical allusion to the tree wise men), the last ice merchant appeared in our lives for a brief instant and showed us the wisdom of knowing and respecting who you are and where you come from. Because if you don't respect yourself how can you expect somebody else to respect you?
