From my earliest days I felt the urge to travel to distant lands seldom visited by Europeans. This urge characterizes a moment when our lifeseems to open before us like a limitless horizon in which nothing attractsus more than intense mental thrills and images of positive danger. I was brought up in a country that has norelations with either of the Indies, and I lived in mountains far from thesea and famous for their working mines, yet I felt an increasing passionfor the sea and a yearning to travel far overseas. What we glean from travelers' vivid descriptions has aspecial charm; whatever is far off and suggestive excites our imagination;such pleasures tempt us far more than anything we may daily experience inthe narrow circle of sedentary life. My taste for botanizing and the study of geology, with the chance of atrip to Holland, England and France accompanied by Georg Forster, who waslucky enough to travel with Captain Cook on his second world tour, helpeddetermine the travel plans I had been hatching since I was eighteen years old. What attracted me about thetorrid zone was no longer the promise of a wandering life full ofadventures, but a desire to see with my own eyes a grand, wild nature richin every conceivable natural product, andthe prospect of collecting facts that might contribute to the progress ofscience. Personal circumstances prevented me from carrying out theseabsorbing plans, and for six years I had the leisure to prepare myself forthe observations I would make in the New World by travelling through several European countries and exploring theAlps, whose structure I would later compare with the Andes between Quitoand Peru.

Around three in the morning, lit by the dismal light of a few pine torches, we set off for the summit of the Piton. We began the ascent from the northern side, which is extremely steep. After two hours we reached a small plateau, named Alta Vista because. of its height. The neveros, those natives who collect ice and snow to sell in the nearby towns, reach as far as this point. Their mules, better trained to climb than those hired by travelers, reach Alta Vista. The neveros then have to carry the collected snow on their shoulders as they go down. Beyond this point the malpaís begins. This term, in use in Mexico, Peru and all places where there are volcanoes, refers to regions stripped of vegetation and covered in lava fragments.