Yesterday morning we awoke to a very clear and beautiful sky. Finally I was able to capture the whole landscape of the Andes range that lies just to the west of us. If you look at the snow capped volcano on the left, you may recognize it from a previous blog. It is Volcan Sangay, that reaches to just about 17,000 ft. On the far right is the volcano I have been trying to photograph since we got here. It is called El Altar or "the altar." Read more about it below...
This volcano reaches a little bit higher than Sangay, to an altitude of just over 17,200 feet. Both are within a 30 mile radius of our house, making them very close. If you use your imagination with the slope of El Altar above, you can see that at one time it reached much, much higher. In fact, there are deposits and rock fragments from this volcano hundreds of miles into the jungle, indicating a huge explosion. Experts say that if El Altar was still intact, it would dwarf Mount Everest, maybe even topping 40,000 feet. Assuming that to be true, when it finally blew a long time ago, it lost over half of its height, thats amazing!
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