Hi. There is only one way up starting at the top cable car station, the rangers will happily remove anyone straying off the official path and they are very strict about only letting people past the gate who have a booked pass and passport id. I booked my pass a week before I went for between 11am and 1pm thinking it would take me 5 hours to climb starting at 6am. I did it in 4 hours to the station arriving around 10am and had to wait. And there was dozens of people arriving up in the cable cars to find that they couldn't go to tge summit. The rangers station only opens at the time of the first cable car so all you could do is start walking early and allow a good 5 hours to get to the summit for sunrise. If you want a sunrise you could get a pass for the last time possible and get the cable car up and tell them you are walking down but it is a long walk in the dark. The other option is book into the altavista refuge and walk up to it the afternoon and stay overnight and walk the rest up in the morning for sunrise but you would still face a 2 hour walk. Shout if there is any other help I can give you.
Thanks. The problem is I will never get the pass because there aren't any, bar some lucky coincidence or insider knowledge. By any chance, do they all leave the gates before sunset? I could climb down with a torch as I did in Scotland and France a fair few times.
Pre-sunrise climb is doable, but here I'd rather just climb without the refuge if it is not too dangerous and obscured path. I'll probably never sleep in the cold conditions (anything below 10C really) and just get more exhausted. We'll see. I hope there is a plan B for scenic mountain Sunrise/set down there.
Oh, by the way - are there any snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, malaria mosquitoes, etc?
Would you say the roads are "exciting" and would they warrant getting a little bit better car for the ultimate driving fun? I could go with cheapo Ibiza from your link or upgrade to Juke / A3 / Focus (hopefully a diesel or at least turbocharged), etc? If it's straight and slow I'd just save the cash.
Finally we come to
lenses and gear.
I'm taking
5DIII with 16-35mm f/4 IS and then we have some options:
100mm macro OR 70-200mm f/4. Do I more likely need macro short tele or max reach? I think I only need one of them.
14mm - is astro realistic in December? It's no use of otherwise.
35mm 1.4 / 85mm 1.8 primes - are there portrait opportunities to shoot ethnic minorities, something really exotic?
24-70mm will potentially get picked if Canon service gets it right this week. 35-70 is a too big hole to have.
Flash - not too sure, unless I take the primes and some modifier like Flashbender and triggers.
Laptop / ipad. This will cause the most headache. I could buy 13" rMBP this week or take the half-useless iPad and fail to do some work I planned for the evenings.