Lifted

After losing a half-hour game of Which Bus?, which I vigorously and audibly blame on having crooked advice from the hostel, I've taken a taxi up to Quito's Teleferiqo cable car. From Quito's twenty-eight-hundred metres, the cable car has lifted me thirteen-hundred metres. That leaves just five-hundred vertical metres to the peak - four-thousand-six-hundred metres. A German girl proudly told me that she had touched the top in three hours. So, I set off with the express aim of destroying her time.

This is harder than I remember. I'm only thirty minutes in, and traversing very moderate alternating rolling inclines, flats, and descents. This isn't going very well, but I don't know why. After all the walks, and hikes and stairs of the last few months, I'm feeling like I need to sit down for another four-and-a-half years. Maybe a banana will will give me the boost I need. Five minutes and a banana later, I've not enjoyed the dramatic and heroic transformation I remember from my cartoon-heavy childhood. I should have brought spinach.

There's a guy and girl about a hundred metres ahead of me. The chase is on, but I seen to be losing more ground than I'm gaining, and soon lose them around a far away corner. Farther up, I pass a resting group of four. I'm guessing they're on their way down. Farther still, and still with no sign of the race leaders, the incline becomes steep and the terrain becomes loose and crumbling. I'm feeling better and I've picked up on my early pace, but I'm still struggling more than I'd expect. I think I lack a legitimate underlying motivation.

I look back to find the group of four that were resting are now catching up on me. Moreover, two of those four are the pair that I've been chasing. They threw me off with a crafty costume change.

The old guy of four has broken off from the group and is making an aggressive beeline for the summit. The remaining three look to be in their early twenties. The girl is making the quickest pace. I do not want to be overtaken, much less by a girl. All of a sudden, I've got motivation, but I'm still having a hard time putting the pedal to the metal on this lousy terrain. She's not. After five or ten minutes, I'm overtaken by a pretty girl. That is probably the worst thing that could have just happened. In our brief exchange, I gather that they're German, and that despite making good pace, she's feeling the burn too. She might well be being sympathetic, but I need to believe she's struggling too. Soon after, the two German boys pass me too. Crap.

They've stopped for a rest a head of me. I guess I could join them and make friends, but, right now, I have no interest making friends. My interest, for no rational reason, is the top of this arbitrary rock. The final section is a pathless scramble. At the top, I look around assuming to find at least the German chick. Some thirty or forty second later, she climbs up and out from behind a rock. Behind her, the two boys stagger over, and finally, the old guy. Champion! I'm quietly satisfied.

I didn't actually bother to take a time on when I started, but I'm reckoning it was two-hours-forty-five, give or take. Not exactly a destruction of my target time, but I'll take it.