I´m back again. The internet here is so cheep, and I´ll be away from it tonight for about a week... and I have 6 hours to kill before my bus into the jungle. So I only have one day to fill you in on, but what a day. I took a TeleferiQo (cable car) up 2.5km to get a view of Quito city. On the way up I met another solo traveler called Darren, from Minnesota (I think, sorry Darren!). Unfortunately the weather was really bad and we couldn´t see a thing:The TeleferiQo brings you to 4100m and from there you can climb up to the summit of Volcan Rucu Picincha. As the weather was pretty bad, we didn´t know if we should do it but we spotted three other hikers who knew the hike who told us it would be ok to try, but gave us hints about turning back if needed. So off we went. After an hour, I was already higher than the Volcanoe in Guatamala. What I loved and found surprising was the diversity of flora and fauna that was so high. Birds and butterflies and rabbits.
Unfortunately the weather got worse, from low visability cloud cover to heavy very low visibility rain: And then I started to feel the effects of the altitude. I got dizzy and later nauseous. Darren climbed on a little bit and encouraged me that we were close to the summit. I followed really slowly and finally made it to 4680m. Woohoo. At that point we were really glad to turn back and try and get out of the rain.

As soon as we headed back down, I started to feel better, the clouds cleared and we got our view of Quito
See the difference from the first photo: Thanks to Darren for his company and encouragement at the top. (photo in cable car on way back down): xxx r