Discover Galapagos - The Adventures of Little Miss Chievous

Little Miss: It was really windy on Cotopaxi! We came up here to find some tiger scorpions. Evan was our guide. We were up about 4,000 metres and really really close to an active volcano. It was really cool!	© Jeff Waugh Our jeep
Little Miss: We were walking around looking under rocks for the tiger scorpions and also found a horse skull and some other bones.	© Jeff Waugh Horse skull and crossbones
Little Miss: The skull still had teeth and we found the jaw bones. My Daddy thought that it had been a young horse from its teeth. We also saw some live wild horses.	© Jeff Waugh Horse skull
Little Miss: There were a lot of flowers blooming and we saw some red paintbrush like we have at home. We stopped and had a picnic alongside a stream. Evan and I climbed to the top of a big boulder and pretended to be flying.	© Jeff Waugh Shrubs on Cotopaxi
Little Miss: I think tiger scorpions are really cool because they look like tigers. We found a lot of them under rocks. My Big Brother knew where to find them. He sure is a good guide!	© Jeff Waugh Tiger Scorpions!
Little Miss: From where we were standing we could see the top of the volcano. It is covered in ice and glaciers. I never thought I would find glaciers on the Equator!	© Jeff Waugh Cotopaxi Volcano
Little Miss: After we visited some Incan ruins on Cotopaxi, we went to visit some others down in the valley. There was an old Incan wall in the living room of the hacienda. They are still digging up other walls in parts of the hacienda.	© Jeff Waugh Incan Wall at San Augustin
Little Miss: I remember we had to take off our hats to go inside the old temple that is now a church.	© Jeff Waugh Incan Temple at San Augustin

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School Notes...

Cotopaxi National Park is located 60 miles (80 kilometers) south of Quito (the capital of Ecuador). Cotopaxi Volcano is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world with a height of just over 19,000 feet (6,000 meters). Cotopaxi is only one of many active volcanoes along the Andes Mountains in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Guagua Pichincha and Tungurahua volcanoes in Ecuador have both erupted in the past few years.

The volcanoes of the Andes Mountains make up the South American portion of the "Ring of Fire" that surrounds the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific Ocean plate is moving underneath the South American continent. As the plate slides below the Andes it is heated by the earth's core and rushes back up through the crust causing volcanic eruptions and earthquakes on a regular basis.