VAN LIFE AT HIGH ALTITUDES [Did We Go Too High] S5E20
![VAN LIFE AT HIGH ALTITUDES [Did We Go Too High] S5E20](/pic/van_life_at_high_altitudes_did_we_go_too_high_s5e20/alVlNTVhTWJIeTg_.jpeg "VAN LIFE AT HIGH ALTITUDES [Did We Go Too High] S5E20")
so we're leaving this amazing authentic little mountain town up here by this crater lake if you missed this you want to go check out our last video this is the coolest little indigenous community but it's about 12 000 feet above sea level and we're ready to head down we think we've found somewhere a little bit lower where we can do a little hiking and maybe find some waterfalls snow can't handle the cold she can't handle the cold it's been cold guys so here we go i gotta tell you ecuador is absolutely time and time again winning my heart over and as we kind of leave this crater and head to the next adventure we're going through these farmlands and it's just indigenous country and you just see these little modest humble homes and you look up the hill and you see the farms where they're growing corn and other stuff and they're doing it all by hand and a lot of like the corn they grow and things like that is to feed the llamas the sheep the alpacas the chickens the pigs and all that stuff is used for the community so they can make their own clothes they grow their own food and it's just really fascinating and beautiful and not to mention aesthetically beautiful how this little region of ecuador is for those of you that do not know in our van we use a composting toilet now back in the united states it's pretty easy to find the cocoa fibers or all kinds of stuff that people use in their toilets down here what we've learned is we use sawdust and it works really good but we're almost out so we just saw a little wood mill on the side of the road and we were hoping to stock up on some sawdust but nobody answered nobody was home so that is an important errand that we need to take care of right curt yeah it is we are in our priority list we are looking for a sawmill or a cabinet shop and we usually can get a big garbage bag full of it for just a couple of dollars so important errand to be done kind of bummed out nobody was there that was an easy place i know we show you all the time our driving through the mountains but it just never ever disappoints right now we're coming down in elevation and we're above the clouds and we're about to go through them to get to a lower elevation waterfalls just popping out of the side of these mountains the flowers that grow on the side of the road change as you drop in elevation it's always just really really stunning and we keep saying well let's just not do any driving in this video we do so much of the driving but the driving is so much of our journey so we're just gonna keep sharing it with you because it's beautiful and it's interesting and these andes mountains are amazing for the past 10 minutes or so we are definitely coming down down down and we are coming through an area where just every couple of hundred feet there is a mudslide that has happened a few of them have been really bad this one was huge this is an actual river crossing yeah this is a this was a biggie but they're every 500 feet there's been a mudslide this always scares me i'll be happy when we get out of the mudslide zone it's gonna be a while comes the plantain truck we've seen a few times when we're sitting in a restaurant these guys drive through town fairly slow blowing their horn so if the little local restaurant owner needs some plantains he just comes out and buys them right off the truck so we've seen some news reports on our facebook group for ecuador of areas of the past month that um real bad flooding towns washed away you know we saw pictures on the facebook group coming through this town i think we're seeing the real live effects of what a raging river can do this whole town i'm pretty sure this is the articles we were reading this town got devastated we were about out of water but right here on the side of the road literally we're parked in the middle of the road we can buy little five gallon bottles and pour it in it's nice to be back somewhere where we can breathe again this is true we're full of diesel we're full of water now we got to get our bellies full found a roadside restaurant let's go eat all right she's fixing up kurt's plate here's my plate we still aren't quite sure what this is clearly that's rice and i got chicken it's actually kind of like a stocking i think it's probably made with plants yeah i do too what'd you get i got the red cardo i got chicken all right so we got a new juice to try mara this is the same drink i had the other day it's like pear it's like an orange beer oh look there it is right oh that thing there that is what it is thank you all right i'm gonna try mine oh that's good that's really good kurt's right it's kind of like a pear yeah and we get to take one with us our lunch those two giant plates of food some fresh squeezed juice curd got an extra order of meat to go with his six dollars not a bad hunker uh fresh juice as well and we got that little juice fruit i can't pronounce it i've already forgot it moro something annie leave it in the comments yeah look they have red bananas if you guys have been watching you know i love these little tiny bananas snow's gonna stop in here see cuatro cuatro rojo juan pina sure if you want one so we got a big bag of bananas half little tiny yellow bananas which are super yummy and one of kurt's favorites and they have red bananas here so we're gonna try red bananas and a pena how much was all that two dollars two dollars for two big bunches of bananas and a pena kirk can't wait we just had a big giant meal but these bananas are red i've never even seen a red banana so i gotta try it i'm gonna break the little top off of there they taste just like a yellow banana but they're red where we're at now we are on the west side of the andes getting closer to the coast and i think we could tell that because we just passed a pickup truck delivering what looked like fish that was caught this morning big fish tuna yeah so we are close to the coast but we're not going there yet we got a waterfall in the jungle that's where we're going first all right we have made it to our campsite we're right off the main road actually but we don't have to worry about hearing traffic noise because wait till you see what we're parked by wait for it there it is we're parked right in front of a waterfall guys and that's the baby one up those stairs there's a big one go check it out i told y'all it was a little one and a big one in the back i think we can get closer to it but it's raining right now so we will wait but we will get up there you all know how much we like monkeys we found one the rain will not stop so we're gonna brave it putting on some raincoat so we're gonna see if we can get up there let's go whenever the sunny days and whatever the weather we have each other and that's how the story will end when it's cold and whatever the season well we'll keep on breathing cause we'll have each other to hold i want to i wanna spend my forever forever like that well i'll be the words on the pages if you've been my sweet melody and the tomb can keep changing the love i'll keep arranging and this is a song that will sing we made it up to the viewing point and back without getting too terribly wet kurt's hanging up our rain jackets the kitties don't even know we came back now we're in for the evening because it's still raining so the cost to stay here was three dollars a piece it's normally a dollar fifty just to enter the cascada they charge us another dollar fifty to stay overnight so total six dollars there is bathrooms and showers over here however the water that feeds both the toilets and the showers comes directly from this river and so you can see this water is brown so is the water in the toilet and so is the water in the shower but it's a cool little stop just right on the side of the road hard to believe you can't hear these big buses were by when you're tucked up in here but you can't but anyway a nice place for a good adventure vana is on the dash curt is at the wheel that was a nice peaceful campsite we drove about an hour out of the way to be able to camp right by that waterfall and it was worth it we have to do some backtracking today but we are headed to a really really really tall place we got a lot of climbing to do gabe today guys yeah it's about a five hour drive and we need to stop at a grocery store and we're still looking for sawdust for our composting toilet and that's becoming very very important we saw a sawmill right on the side of the road here in the middle of the mountains and it's a success look at this big bag of sawdust that's a lot of composting toilets it's wet oh it's wet so we got to figure out how to let it dry but later we'll let it dry and we will put it into smaller ziploc bags store it in the trunk how much was that curdy one dollar one dollar all right one chore done all right it was time to make a visit to the big grocery store so we could stock up mainly on cat food um that's the thing that's hard to find because we try to keep them on the same brand but we've got plenty of cat food we've stocked up on groceries kurt's putting it away how you doing back there kirti we're getting it grocery day's always busy always interesting next stop the base of a very very very tall volcano all right there's the mighty chimbrazo snow caught the first glimpse it's sticking out a little bit from the clouds but not much so just you guys know about this place it stopped closest to the sun and furthest from the center of the earth place on the planet the top of timbrazo they call it the poor man's mount everest we have found our camp and the first order of business is we take our sawdust out of the big bag and we fill up and we reuse these gallons of flop bags takes one gallon of sawdust for our toilet so so far from this bag we've got this is the fourth gallon bag we're filling up so we'll probably get six or seven bags out of this i'd say a bag lasts us five to eight days depending on how things are going right kerdi we are settled into our camp and it is cold and windy we've hidden behind this dune here and right behind the van is uh volcano chimbrazo now we are parked at 13 250 feet above sea level and look at that monster sticking up behind us covered in snow tomorrow morning bright and early we're only about a mile from the national park entrance and we'll be heading in get a little closer to this thing drive through the park pop out on the south side but uh they're supposed to be some cool little deer like little creatures i am totally blank for their names right now we're gonna try to find them but it's time to button up the van get inside turn on our heater it is cold up here we just discovered that our diesel heater inside of our van works at 13 250 feet then cranks we are cozy in our little tiny house on wheels and kurt is whipping us up i'm gonna call it an avocado salad so we were wondering for those of you that don't know diesel heaters don't really like to work so well at high altitude sometimes they give you a fit but ours is doing pretty good right now we're lucky today yes we are ladies and gentlemen welcome to chimbraso good morning everyone well it was a windy night through here and we had the heater run and the heater worked well so i can't say we were cold but it's certainly cold outside we're a little over 13 thousand feet it's kind to believe hard to believe the chambrazzo is over twenty thousand feet to the summit there but that is the case we're gonna head up there today and get a closer look hopefully we'll get to show you guys before these clouds set in they are everywhere though so i'm not overly optimistic but we'll see what we can get for you guys so we have stopped on the side of the road halfway between the park entrance and our camp because there are these cool little animals they're called vicunias i might not be saying that right they're similar to deer they look kind of like an alpaca and they're crossing the road and they're running around on this hill it is very windy here kurt is going to try to get over them with the drone so you guys can get a better look at them too look at it people be bopping around whoo he's trying to land it yay holding on to his hat holding on to the remote control and it's freezing out there i better get the heater cranked up for curt we saw you trying to land that thing holy cow wow wow before i found out the name of them i was calling them alpaca deer i think that's a pretty good description look how long their necks are hi pretty guys they're so pretty all right here we go so we've got a bit of a problem vanna is definitely not feeling well this morning she threw up a few times last night and she is lethargic this morning she is eating and drinking but we're hoping that maybe the altitude is getting to her maybe she's sensitive to the altitude we are very high up and me and kurt are both suffering from a little bit of a headache and a little bit of fatigue so we are going to just drive through this national park next to this amazing volcano we're not going to try to climb it like we did at the last big volcano and we're going to head down and if getting down to a lower elevation doesn't help her dramatically then we're going to be looking for a vet just to get her checked out but she's definitely not feeling super good and that's our baby so one of the cool things in the us is we did our farewell usa tour with all the national parks and all the wildlife and you know we've been chasing monkeys and birds but big stuff like deer we haven't seen north america you can't see them but they're all over the place out here and it's one of the things i love about national parks is the way they protect the nature and these little uh pecunias are super super cool and also this volcano is chimbrazzo is so impressive i'm not sad that we can't go up there because my mind is 100 on getting vana to a lower altitude and that's the most important thing right now so we're headed out there for that but while we're driving through here i definitely am going to take in this beautiful national park and even though the landscape looks like the moon you can't help but stare at that big giant chimborazo get down out of this mess yeah when we had a bit of internet back there we stopped so i could do some research to see if animals are affected by altitude and they are not all animals kind of like humans some some people are affected some cats and dogs are affected i think it's pretty obvious that vanna is affected and we are working on getting her lower for the little bit of articles i could find about it we need to get below 8 000 feet and that's when you know pets should start to be okay um if you're at a high altitude for too long with them feeling bad it could become very serious uh they can build up fluid in their lungs and on their brain so we're driving very safely but we're driving as fast as we can to get back down to a lower elevation for our little pumpkin and g is worried about her too y'all can hear him so our i overlander app that we depend on so much and love you download it onto your phone and you can use it when you don't have internet connection which is good so i just went back if y'all remember a couple of weeks ago we stayed at a really cool finca or farm and met monica who's from the states but lives down here now that is where we're headed and i just went there on the ioverlander app and it is about 7 900 feet it is perfect so we're gonna go there we're gonna stay there for at least two days and just see if vanna starts to feel better if she doesn't start to feel better monica has a lot of pets so we know she probably has a local vet we could get to if we needed to it's the perfect place to go see about vana and also have us set up to be close enough to cuenca for my dentist appointment that's in four days geez guys we're having a tough run of it right now but all concerns are on vana right now all right we're already down to almost 10 000 feet we stopped for a second and gave van a little bit of water and she got up for a minute and now she's laid back down this is tough guys we can tell she feels really bad and we just didn't know we just not even something that we'd ever heard of or thought about that altitude could affect our little animals and we feel absolutely horrible we're going vanna baby we're going we made it to the farm we're at 7 500 feet everything i read said get below 8 000 we've done it as soon as we open the door by the little birds here she hopped down and now the most important thing she's eating next we're going to make sure she gets some water but this is mostly gravy so she's getting a lot of oh liquids think we're gonna be okay guys she gave us quite a scare make sure you think about your pets if you're going somewhere that they're not used to being up we just had no idea to even think about altitude sickness in our pets that was tough guys if something was to happen to our little kitties because of us being ignorant to something like that but she's chowing down on some gravy right now the next 12 hours we need to make sure she keeps eating and drinking this might change some of our plans as we head farther south we'll drive through high elevations but we will never camp that high again it's just not worth it what are you doing bubba what are you doing you got an audience so jill just lay here and these alpacas are so curious and they just stare at them they can't take their eyes off him buy stuff up there between the two of them they'll kind of pay a little attention to me but they want to watch this guy right here so we have been here at the finca for almost 24 hours i showed y'all yesterday vanna drinking a little water which was a very good sign but yesterday afternoon was a bit scary she was definitely still very groggy confused and tired and we were worried we were going to have to make an emergency vet run this morning but as you can see we're all relaxed g's watching the birds vanna's feeling better kurt's doing some editing vana just found this little secret cubby hi pretty girl she's aged she's drank she scratched her scratching pads she's watching the birds she feels better maybe still a little tired but we don't need to make the vet run we're going to relax though no moving days we're gonna give her more time to feel better so with that kurt's gonna keep editing and we'll see you guys in a few days cheers if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys you
2022-06-11 21:59
