One of the great benefits and appeal of the international climbing trips that Alpine Ascents organize is the fact that, although the focus of the trip is the climbing, they add copious amounts of food, historically significant tours, and general immersion in a good part of the local culture. I think we were all expecting that the great food we were able to enjoy in the hotels and restaurants would diminish, the higher we got up the mountains – definitely not the case! We enjoyed multi-course, gourmet meals all the way up to high camp at 17K on Chimborazo. I spent a lot of time taking photos of our food and note that this is probably only 1/3 of my photos!

Most of our meals started with a soup – Locre de Papa is a potato soup, sometimes served with popcorn, that we had a lot of. Other soups included vegetables in broth. Sometimes salads were offered but I was a little leery of lettuce and the water that it was washed in. Our guide seemed to think it was fine but I didn’t want to take any chances. The main courses were generally a choice between fish, chicken or beef. There were two team members that were vegetarian/vegan and they were fairly easily accommodated and their meals looked great. Desserts were plentiful!

All I can say is that no one lost any weight on this trip!

Almost all the hotels and restaurants had ample supplies of bottled water for the Gringos.

Eating was a full time job and not a spectator sport!