Bad Science

Quiroga – Laguna Cuichoca – Otavalo – Quito, Ecuador

I guess the rule that what goes up must come down is pretty solid, right? Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but Diana and I are maybe getting a little tired of it. 

Or maybe we’re just getting tired, period. 

It just seems like everything we do these days comes with a stiff climbing penalty. It’s as if some tyrannical ruler has arbitrarily decreed that there will be a tax for every mile we cover. 

And it’s not 25%. It’s 100%. If you go down a mile; you must come back up a mile. (And note that this sounds symmetrical. But, in reality, you go down about five-times faster than you go up. So you spend about ten minutes going down and about an hour making your way back up . . .) 

Such is life ever since we entered the mountains before Medellin in Colombia. 

It can be kind of demoralizing. 

“Okay, great, it’s 52 miles to Quito – and it’s only 1,000’ higher in elevation than we are now . . . Should be pretty flat . . .”

And then you ride that 52 miles. 

It starts with an 8-mile ride to about 10,500’ – taking about two hours. Whoever heard of 8 miles taking two hours?!?

”Great, at this rate we’ll be in Quito by 8 p.m. or so . . .”

It’s freezing at 10,500’ by the way – even if you are within 20 miles of the equator. 

So we put on all of our clothes, have some bizcochos – a local thing: basically biscuits you dip into sweet coffee – and then proceed to lose all the elevation you just gained – plus a ton more. 

You’re going down, down, down. When you get to 9,300’ – your destination elevation – you’re like: “Okay – we can stop now. Good enough. We can take it from here . . .”

But no one is listening. (Kind of a characteristic of despotic leadership . . .) You just keep going down. And now it’s hot and you have to strip all your warm clothes back off. 

Soon, there is a mirador and you are overlooking a little Grand Canyon type thing. It’s at this point that you realize that you are basically at the equator. But there’s no sign for it. Sad. So you take some pictures and you figure you have gone down enough because you’re now down to 6,500’ or something – and doesn’t it just make sense that at the equator things would kind of even out? 

But no, it turns out that you need to descend all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon thing before you go up again. 

And then, slowly, painfully, you begin to climb out again. All that height you had wasted in the rear view mirror . . . So sad. 

By the time you reach Quito you have gone up over 6,700’ on the day. 

Can you say exhausted?

And this is on top of our “day off” on Friday when we decided that we would take an easy day to hike around Laguna Cuichoca – giving our legs a little rest from the mountains. 

I say “on top of” because here’s what that day looked like: Start by biking a 2,000’-over-6-miles climb up to the crater lake. Then a ten mile hike around the lake – which hike included about two thousand more feet of climbing. 

The other added benefit of all this climbing? God forgot to provide oxygen at 12,000’ – so each step is like it’s mini-saga:

• Lift foot. 
• Breathe. 
• Place foot up a few inches. 
• Breathe. 
• Balance. 
• Gulp some more air in the futile hope there will be some oxygen. 
• Wobble. 
• Breathe. 
• Think about stepping with other foot . . 

I mean, it was beautiful and all. 

But now – after yesterday – we are double sore. Sore from all the climbing and biking. And sore from hiking – something we haven’t done a lof of in the past five months. 

Oh, added bonus. My crocs slipped out one time, and – in the instant – I put my left hand down to catch myself. Result? That sore left shoulder of mine took the brunt of it. 

Which brings me to the last complaint . . . You get all tired up here – and then you can’t even get a good night’s sleep because that oxygen deprivation doesn’t go away at night. Throw in a throbbing shoulder and you are up every fifteen minutes . . .

The upshot of all this is that Diana and I are about ready to be done with mountains for a while. We’re going to get to Cuenca – another 300 miles or so on a road they call the Avenue of the Volcanoes – sounds flat, doesn’t it? But then we are planning to cash in our chips and head for lower elevations. We have some ideas on what that might mean – but you’ll have to tune in to upcoming episodes for a complete picture . . .

First impressions of Quito? You mean, other than being incredibly hilly at the end of a long day of climbing? Beautiful. Looks like it’s a long, narrow city nestled into a mountain valley that runs north to south for about twenty miles. But we’ll have a lot more to say on this in the days ahead.

Fun Diana-ism. We go out to Thai last night (our first Thai food since, we think, some lonely town in Iowa) and it turns out the owners are Chinese. So Diana dusts off her Mandarin superpowers and we have a very nice meal that is not piece-of-meat-with-rice-and-beans-and-little-dab-of-salad. Turns out that there are places that have these things called fresh vegetables – even in the middle of Latin America. Wonderful.

Today we have lunch with Mario. He’s good friends with some people we know in Minneapolis, including Blog Reader Margit B. Margit connected us and now we’re staying in Mario’s very nice Airbnb and looking forward to connecting soon.

Tomorrow we stop and stay with friends of Blog Readers Mark R and Linda A in a suburb outside of Quito. 

You people are taking good care of us!

Oh, and did I forget to mention . . . The last two days were pretty amazing. Fantastic views. Good people along the way. Nice city. Plenty of invigorating exercise . . . (And, in my case anyway, no heart attacks going straight up walls randomly thrown into our days . . .)

It’s true that we wish the rules of science were a little more forgiving up here . . . But the rewards continue to be great. So who’s complaining? (Besides me . . .)

Never seen some of these car brands