After a late flight into Quito, I met my driver who immediately apologized for not taking me directly into the city. Quito now has program of traffic control that is very strongly policed. My driver had the wrong numbered plate to enter the city during rush hour, so we took a super slow route to get to the hostel. It was a "bit of tourism" as my driver said, done at less than 50kph. It took 3 hours to get there, including a prolonged stop on the side of a major highway as we watched locals try their luck running across 6 lanes of otherwise high-speed traffic.
At $100 a ticket, I really couldn't fault him for waiting. It would hardly be worth his while. By comparison, someone would be quite happy to earn $100 in a week here, if they could.
And so I got to know Omar and the many concerns a man making a living in Quito mighf have. As with most cabbies, he was happy to talk for the whole ride, a real test of my Spanish first thing.
When I finally arrived at the hostel, I did everything I could to acclimate badly to the altitude: I had few beers, avoided water, ate a heavy meal and went to bed late. My normal program might be utterly the opposite.
And so I am dragging today and can definitely feel the effects of the altitude. Coming from sea level in Panama, it's not so surprising. A slow start and slow moving around is what's in order, I think.
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