I travelled up on a cloudy day mid-week and the complex (with pricy restaurants, cafe’s, a shopping mall and even a theme park) was almost deserted. It was in fact so few people wanting to pay the high fare to risk only see clouds at the top that they decided to close earlier and shut the cable car down at 1 pm. When I got to the top and found out that the hike to the top should take four hours up and down, returning by 1 pm certainly looked hopeless.
At the top I met a girl from Germany also keen on going up the mountain. Being two, we decided to go anyway, screw the cable car and walk down (two hour walk along some roads that a guard vaguely pointed out).
After getting lost and taking the wrong way up a couple of times (paths that ended in an impossible passage or a vertical wall) we finally made it to (or very close to) the summit. It could be concluded that: 1) the four-hour estimation was very optimistic, it took much longer; 2) on 4500 m height it is quite difficult to walk as there is little oxygen in the air and you run out of breath after two steps; 3) on such heights it get quite cold and windy and maybe one should have considered another jacket than the one used in the sunny Caribbean.
After turning around, it was obviously much quicker to climb down. Still, we arrived at the cable-car station at around 4 pm. Luckily, there was a guard still there who were supposed to finish his shift at 5 pm so if we waited an hour, we could take the cable car down. It made it all much easier but already cold from the climb, one hour of waiting in the cold afternoon breeze (although it was slightly warmer, 4100 m could also be chilly in the late afternoon) did not really make anyone happy.
Fortunately, the delay was not too long and we finally got down to the city, before dusk.
I was surprised that I woke up feeling fine the next day, with no symptoms of a cold. Like a true Viking.
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