Buenos Dias Queridos Amigos!

January 2, 2007

Here we are in Quito, Ecuador! It’s about 8AM – the same time as in Connecticut. Eight hours is a ridiculously long time to spend on airplanes to end up in the same time zone, but curiously Ecuador is almost due south of where we started. It is a geographic oddity that ALL of South America is actually east of Cleveland. You think of the continent as being underneath North America, but actually it is slid out way to the east. It has to do with plate tectonics, or some such thing.

We arrived late last night and took a quick cab ride to the hotel, feeling the disorientation of travelers arriving in an unfamiliar city in the dark, without a sense of context. I didn’t get much sleep – partly the excitement of starting my walkabout, but mostly the altitude. Quito is situated in a valley high up in the Andes, at about 10,000 feet. (Don’t hold me that – this blog guarantees only opinions and a smattering of abuse, if you are looking for actual facts, find an encyclopedia.) You would have thought that before they built a city here they would have checked to make sure there was oxygen. It is a spectacular location though, ringed by tall rugged peaks – many extinct or not so extinct volcanoes. And the weather is supposedly mild and spring-like all year long, even though it is just 20 miles from the Equator. (“Ecuador”, get it?) The only thing missing is something to breathe.

I have had problems with altitude sickness before, in places like Mexico City and Colorado. If you’ve ever experienced it, you know the symptoms are shortness of breath, headaches and nausea. Sleeping becomes a particular problem because it is hard to get sufficiently relaxed. You’re not getting enough oxygen at your customary rate, so you find yourself focusing on breathing faster and your heart starts racing. This usually clears up in a day or so as your body adjusts and produces more red blood cells. Picture a House-like zoom through the arteries, down to the spleen or some such place where legions of newly trained beet-red, lifesaver-shaped erythrocytes are hurling themselves into the rapidly flowing blood stream. I wish they’d get cracking.

We’re headed now for the Galapagos Islands – Darwin’s laboratory of natural selection. We’re joining a boat tour that will take us to several islands over the next four days. I don’t expect that they have evolved the internet yet over there, so this will probably be my last post for a while.

Your faithful correspondent,

Walkabout Dave