welcome to cajas national park we're eric and sarah and we've been traveling around ecuador
for over three months now so if you're new to our channel make sure you subscribe so you don't miss
any of our videos we've been on the coast for the majority of our trip but we're finally finally in
the mountains these canadian kids have really been missing our bc mountain so we are so excited to be
here camping and hiking in this national park for the next couple nights so we've been doing a ton
of research on cajas national park and we want to give you as much information as possible so
that you can also hike and camp here but it's a little bit cold so we're actually going to start
hiking and we'll tell you a little bit more in a bit two steps in and it's already beautiful
so the majority of our video is going to be showing you extensive hiking and camping
opportunities here but don't be discouraged if you're not a big hiker or camper because there is
so much to do here even just on a day trip there's actually also a visitor center center actually
just when you get in and you can have some nice food there there's a gorgeous view so even if
you just came here for the day it would totally be worth it yep and you can even camp literally right
behind us here which is just at the very first lake doesn't take more than like a minute 20 20
steps yeah and even during non-pandemic times there's a refuge that you can stay in at the
top right by the visitor center that you can stay overnight it's not open right now but that is an
opportunity so if you're not a big hiker or camper there's lots to do here just for the day even
this place is beyond beautiful honestly it's like something straight out of a movie
i'm honestly not sure whether we're gonna see a group of urakhai taking the hobbies to isengard
or we're going to see a giant t-rex running through these fields it is honestly gorgeous
we made it to paper trees forest that's what this is called and this is a common place that
if people are just gonna come for a day hike they'll come to here if you don't want to do
the full like five hour day hike loop you can literally come here probably in an hour maybe
hour and a half you're going really slow but it's so cool because all these trees literally look
like they're made of paper how's it going i feel like a monkey you look like a monkey that backpack
cool tricks wow so impressed
we are very very close to our camping spot it's just i believe over here we
were told we have to go past this lake and maybe just up and around and then up so we
have a nice little view so that's where we're headed the trails are quite good
but they also get pretty muddy so you just have to make sure that you're wearing proper footwear
and yeah make sure that if you are going to camp here bring some proper shoes right there
all right as you're talking about it of course it's when you fall
i've trapped myself
sarah's a bit smarter than i am yeah it's a lot more exhausting to come up here though
altitude is no joke now who made the wrong decision
this all right here is water pretty much yeah sarah's feet are already soaked
this is unfortunate oh no oh my word
oh there goes the dry feet for the week
they didn't get much worse but it wasn't good well that's so bad they're just fully soaked
hopefully they dry tonight so like i said definitely wear some good shoes we don't have
any proper hiking shoes here these are more like rock climbers which would be normally fine if it
was dry it's been totally fine actually up until here but it is quite wet as sarah just found out
soggy surviving so eric and i are both trying to scope out the best place to camp tonight so we are
dividing and conquering i'm looking on this peak and eric is way over there you can see him waving
all right sarah is this the spot i think so it's looking like the flattest piece
of ground and nice view it's true it's quite nice it's getting a bit
chilly though so time to set up quick time to set up the tent
wow we are magical nice and bundled up we made it to our camping spot and it suddenly got really
cold so we layered up and hoping it doesn't rain we've lucked out so far we didn't set up in the
rain so fingers crossed i'm pretty content at this point so we wanted to give you a little bit of
information on cajas national park it was actually first a reservation area just for the natural
habitat here in 1977 it was it was labeled as such and in 1996 it actually became a national park
so cajas national park is actually 28.5 hectares of land and it has 4 000 lakes in it that's insane
that's so many lakes and everywhere you go there's just water like you're just weaving throughout
i mean they call it most of them lagoons that's right because they're more kind of like ponds not
necessarily like huge lakes but it's crazy all the trails just kind of weave throughout all the lakes
it's awesome super cool yeah and it's actually it was it became a national park because there's so
many archaeological sites here there's part of the inca trail actually goes through here and there's
also pre-columbian foundations uh actually behind these mountains behind here yeah so
there's ruins and there's caves that you can go in it's really cool it's wild and there's eight
marked and they're well marked trails in the park but there's many more other trails that you can
go and explore too but there's eight that are kind of yeah on the map and really well marked
with colors and stuff so there's lots of history in this park and uh yeah it's it's just amazing
it's beautiful too it's it's so sweet i don't know if we've said that enough yet like i can't
even believe all we've just seen in since coming from the highway it's crazy it's so beautiful here
it's so cold it's starting to rain i just want to eat my pasta
this is not looking good
once it got dark it got really cold yeah super cold and windy so we came in our tent we uh
tried to play a game for a little while at some candy
but honestly we can't convince ourselves to stay up any longer so it's 7 30 and we're
just gonna go to bed we are realizing how much more tired we are from this trip than we thought
oh man altitude just kills yeah it definitely drains you but we'll see you in the morning
just the sunrise i was hoping for it was a bit of a cold night
we got up at like 2 a.m to get a time lapse and the tent was actually frosty which is crazy and
i wouldn't say that i slept great i probably honestly only slept maybe four hours
and i think sarah maybe a little bit more but it was pretty uncomfortable
but that's just kind of what you get when you rent gear and you don't really have your own
stuff however beautiful beautiful warning i just cannot believe it
morning guys don't i look fresh after a great great night's sleep eric and i both did not sleep
very well last night it wasn't like we were super cold but we're really warm so we just kept waking
up a lot and it wasn't super comfy or kind of on some rocks honestly not really sure but did not
sleep very much so we're not feeling very good today our plan today was to do a hike in the
in the south park but it's a very long one like probably would be about 15 to 20 kilometers so
last night was supposed to be our trial run see how we feel before we commit to that
after not sleeping very good last night and it's still pretty cold today
i think we're gonna either just kind of explore today and see if we can find a different place
to camp or just pack it in and go back home uh it would have been really nice to do the other
one but honestly the altitude here is is crazy and and you can't yeah you have to take that seriously
we're both not feeling super good from that pretty light-headed and dizzy so
we just don't want to push ourselves too much so we'll just go back to cuenca we're hoping
after being there for a week and a half that it would have been we would have been acclimatized
but it is what it is so we'll see we're we're content we're having a lot of fun so
it's all that matters eric's down in there grabbing us some water right now
here comes eric back from hauling water
this part is so swampy it's a really gorgeous view but very impractical when
you got to walk all the way up there to get some fresh water but the views are very nice
well looks like the weather decided for us it's been windy and rainy yeah we've
been hiding in our sleeping bags in the tent for like the last hour hoping it would pass
but it doesn't look like it's going anywhere and you can't even see the mountains anymore
so i think we're gonna pack up put on a rain gear and call it yeah we're gonna call it
so cold and gross
packing in the rain is just the worst because you ought to do it all inside the tent
we're leaving rained up rain proofed up ready to get out of here
i gotta say goodbye to our little valley it's been nice but at the same time not very nice
dying guys slowly passing away the altitude is so insane i have never felt so sick when hiking
before i'm surprised i haven't thrown up or passed oh yeah oh we're doing it right air dog yeah we're
gonna make it cajas national park ranges from 3 100 meters above sea level to i believe 4 600
meters and i feel like we're kind of somewhere in the middle it's just crazy altitude is no freaking
joke no joke it wrecked us yeah definitely both have altitude sickness that's for sure
well oh man you cry i'm so happy to be back it's it was crazy i like having altitude sickness i
never thought i never thought that i would have that no i didn't think it would be this bad
it's brutal like we've been like dizzy and out of breath but this is like
i want to vomit and faint every two steps i take it's crazy but we made it time to get some lunch
once i can breathe all right we made it back oh we survived that was a grind i gotta say that was way
crazier than we were expecting we i mean we do hiking but that was just like the altitude was
next level oh yeah we were we definitely got altitude sickness which i did not expect being
in cuenca for the last almost two weeks yeah and uh yeah just it's just crazy altitude really does
get you totally but that being said it was super fun while it lasted we still had a great time and
highly recommend coming especially for the day it's free to visit for the day you can hike around
i mean camping is only four dollars a night too so if you're acclimatized it's awesome
to come camping i wouldn't do it if you're if you're not used to the altitude that's for sure
but yeah it was it was still super fun yeah so if you haven't already
uh please just subscribe to our channel we're trying to get to a thousand subscribers by the
end of july so please uh if you can subscribe and uh if you like this video please like it
as well boost our video and uh yeah we'll see in the next i just want to go one bed
come on i'm so tired okay that's awesome oh all right let's go again 2am
and we realize that the sky is clear so we're gonna take a little bit of a night lapse video
the things that we do for a vlog it's a good thing i woke up to pee
be straight with me how crazy is my hair right now it literally cannot be seen you're just
a random floating head feels like it's like a freaking bee's nest