If I climb a mountain and I turn around...

Yesterday, our host brother, Daniel, took my roommate Jenny and me on the most intense hike of our lives. We left the house at 7:30 AM to catch a bus to where his friend Silvana picked us up in her car and dropped us off at another bus stop. We then took another bus to the teleferiqo, the cable car that goes to a view point above the city of Quito. the viewpoint at the teleferiqo is at 4,100 meters above sea level. This is a very high altitude and when I first stepped off the cable car I felt a bit dizzy. We sat for a bit to get acclamated to the altitude before starting our 3.5 hour hike to the top of la cara de sucre which is one of the peaks of la pichincha mountain. The hike was incredibly difficult because of the altitude. I felt so pathetically out of shape. I was breathing heavily and my heart was pounding after every 15 minutes of walking steeply uphill. But the hike was beautiful. you could see the whole city of Quito layed out before you. The city is surrounded by other snow capped mountains that Daniel was so proud to point out to us. That one is Cotopaxi, and that one is Antisana. He clearly has a real connection to the land. His friend Lily who climbed with us, cried when she reached the top of the mountain. Actually, I was told this. Jenny and I did not quite reach the top. We got way too out of breath at about 5,000 meters and decided to sit tight and watch the birds and airplanes flying below us. On the way we met a bunch of ther gringos, some from canada new zealand, and even a boy from Newton, MA with whom we shared a few mutual friends. The world is acutally quite a small place. We returned home from our exhausting adventure at about 6:30 starving. We had done all that exercise and only eaten apples and oranges along the way! Thank goodness madre had chicken soup and some fried rice ready for us when we got home. I took a shower and promptly fell asleep at 8:30 last night. It was an exhausting but incredibly rewarding day.