The Land of Volcanoes

In Which, we get ashed on

Ecuador is incredibly diverse. There are few countries that I can think of that have a similar level of biodiversity or topographical diversity. Within roughly 110,000 square miles, there are four distinct regions: the Coast, the Highlands, the Amazon, and the Galapagos Islands. Within those regions are a multitude of biomes, from tropical highland areas to temperate desert areas. 

As you probably know by now, we live in Ambato. We're in the province of Tungurahua, which is smack in the middle of the country. The Andes mountains run N-S through the country, and we are smack in the middle of them. 

You might be sensing a theme here - we're in the middle, ok?

Ambato - that's us

Within the Andes are held all of Ecuador's volcanoes. Oh yes, Ecuador has volcanoes. And several of them are outstandingly and terrifyingly active. They like to call this chain the Avenue of Volcanoes. The road from Quito to Cuenca winds its way through the entire chain, and it's breathtaking. 

Avenida de los Volcanes

We happen to live within sight of two of these volcanoes. Cotopaxi, which we can see from our balcony, is to the northeast of the city, about 40 miles away. Tungurahua is about 20 miles southeast of us, and we can see her from our friend David's house.

If you want to get technical, you can say we live in sight of a third volcano, Chimborazo. We actually can't see him because he's to the southwest of us, over the crest of the valleyside that we live next to. Fun fact about Chimborazo, even though he's not the highest mountain above sea-level, due to the equatorial bulge his summit IS the farthest point on the earth's surface from the center of the earth.

Doing my best to help you win your next game of trivia

As far as Cotopaxi goes, even though he's pretty active these days, we don't worry too much about him. We're uphill so there's no worry of lahars (basically a giant mudslide caused by a volcano) and the wind typically blows from E-W or some other direction away from Ambato. So he's great to look at, but we don't worry about him so much.

Cotopaxi, from our balcony

Stock photo of Cotopaxi

Tungurahua is a slightly different story than Cotopaxi.  Affectionately called 'Mama T' by locals, she woke up in 1999 after almost 100 years of dormancy and she's been active ever since, famously erupting twice in the summer of 2006. Baños (of tourist fame) is essentially right at her feet, in the shadow of the volcano. 

Mama T from the north side of Ambato

Since we've been here (April of 2015) there have been several general announcements and alerts regarding Mama T, two that I can remember which were moderately serious. The most recent one has been since the beginning of November, with the IG-EPN (Instituto Geofisico Escuela Politecnica Nacional, Ecuador) putting out an orange alert on the 17th. Basically this means that people should start preparing for a volcanic event of some sort. 

Allllllll that to say...we woke up this morning to a significant coating of ash on everything outside. Some had even made its way just inside our balcony door.

Our terrace is normally white

Nice, even coating

Gathering in the grooves of the covering over our washer

It was interesting, to say the least. We have pretty constant winds here on the southwest side of the valley so even when there were other alerts, we didn't receive any fallout.

In the grand scheme of things though, heavy ash and dirty skies are generally the effects we'll feel here in Ambato. We're uphill so the threat of lahars is very minimal.

For now, we're doing our best to keep it out of the apartment and out of our lungs. Thankfully there doesn't seem to be anymore coming from this particular expulsion. John spent about an hour and a half sweeping up the stuff on our terrace with our downstairs neighbor.

I don't know the properties of volcanic ash in general, but what Tungurahua puts out has the lovely quality of drying into a hard, cement-like substance when it gets wet. So we had to sweep up as much as we possibly could before cleaning down the terrace with soap and water. Having dried cement blocking our water pipes seems like not such a great idea.

So that's our adventure so far! Mama T is still pretty active, so who knows what the coming days hold? More ash, probably. Hopefully not too much more though, because Jethro is just chomping at the bit to get back outside...

...not

Next up - our visas are coming up in the beginning of December, so next week we head to Quito to start the process to renew them. Oy vey.

V