Quito with altitude

High places, vantage points draw our eye. Maybe its inate in our species to climb and seek clear vistas. From Old Town, the Basilica del Voto Nacional drew our eyes and then our feet. We climbed the circular stairs and looked far out over the city from the parapet above the rose window. If Rome was built on seven hills, Quito must carpet a dozen or more. From our perch, the top of an adjacent hill crowned with a park called our eye and drew us on.

A number of cross streets end in a set of stairs, where the land becomes too steep for cars. We ascended a set to the park, pausing to catch our breath on the landings while school children passed us eating ice cream.

The next morning, feeling better acclimatized and after a morning cup of coca tea (a diuretic and digestive that promotes increased oxygen intake), we took a cab to the TeleferiQo, a gondola that brings tourists to the shoulder of Volcan Pichincha overlooking Quito. aT 4100M, I stood higher than I had at any other point in my life. We were greated by a paramo pipit, a cousin of the alpine birds in the US. Well above tree line, the vegetation was dominated by tussock grass (ichu)and matted alpine flowers which grow close along the ground where temperature fluctuates less and the wind´s influence is diminished

Ecuadoran hillstar hummingbirds with white bellies and indigo heads fed from the orange thistle-like chuquirangua, and a pair of carunculated caracaras played on the wind. The air was thin, the absence of it evident not only in our racing heartbeats, but also in the way it entered our nostrils and the complaints of our muscles as they worked with less than their usual fare of oxygen.

A gently sloping foot path brought us along an open ridge where clouds broke to offer view of distant mountains and the blanket of Quito below. I stopped and sat in the alpine garden watching swirling mist and listening to the echoing calls of birds while Mike scrambled up the last 100m of the Rucu Pichincha.

We nearly flew down, pausing on the last rise to eat chicken empeñadas, with the city at our feet.