Take My Breath Away

Wednesday 24 February
Quito

I bought a new mobile phone. I don’t actually need it for the phone especially, but I do need an alarm clock and something to help me tell the time. I checked on the internet what the word for ‘cheap’ is in Spanish (barato) and after a long discussion, much use of mime and broken Spanish I’m the proud owner of a Nokia 1661, the kind of phone that brings back nostalgic memories of the 3210.

I take it easy in the morning and then in the evening head for the Teleférico – a small cable car that takes you up the side of one of the mountains that surround Quito to views across the town and surrounding area. Now I’ve been in cable cars before and don’t usually have a problem with them, but I haven’t been in one for a while. When I get there the place is practically deserted. The cars are small – they only fit four people. And the pylons holding the whole thing up are for some reason lent over away from the vertical giving the very real impression that they are going to fall over at any minute.

So I get in a car and begin my journey up the mountain. The sun is out, the car is made from plastic and the heat, combined with my newly discovered fear of cable cars, is starting to make me sweat. The pylons have numbers. You can count them as you go up. As we were getting higher I was hoping that nothing was going to happen at pylon 13. Which is ridiculous as I’m not superstitious, but the mind can play tricks on you at times like these. 10 ... 11 ... 12 ... Pylon 13 appeared. The car passed through it, juddering through the attachments. We had made it. I thought. And then two seconds later ... Clunk! The whole thing suddenly stopped. And because of that bastard Newton, the sudden end to the movement of the cable meant that the car itself still had a lot of momentum. So there I was, swinging carelessly back and forth from the cable like some crazy pendulum, shaking slightly in the wind as well, suspended tens of meters above the sharply sloping mountainside below. Just past pylon 13.

I couldn’t quite believe it.

As I desperately attempted to contain the fractious parts of my mind in some kind of sensible order we continued to swing back and forth for a good while longer. And then, after what was literally a couple of minutes, we started again and made it to the top. I had survived. That was the first of two life-threatening events that day.

I was now at 4100 metres and although there was no headache there was a definite shortness of breath. There was a good view over the city but on the other side of the mountain there was only cloud. The ground disappeared into a void of grey nothingness. I walked slowly along the path, taking pictures and videos of the scene. There was a fence with some warnings about not going further. The path went through it and continued up into the clouds themselves. There was no point in heading up there. There wouldn’t exactly be a good view. I turned around and headed back. By the time I had returned to the cable car, the cloud had enveloped the whole of the top of the mountain and you couldn’t see anything. I returned to the relative normality of 3000 metres.

Like I said Quito is a nice place, but you need to take taxis after dark. The streets are not safe. I’d read this in both my guidebooks and on a sign in the hostel. I went out for supper, although again I wasn’t hungry and just had some clam chowder in an Irish American themed restaurant. I walked home. I had forgotten to take a taxi. I’d like to blame the altitude for making me lack concentration. All the way taxis were stopping and offering me a lift. It was only a few blocks I was thinking. No need. Another factor what that for the whole time in Quito until the last day, I had my clock (on my computer and newly bought phone) an hour slow. So instead of it being before midnight, it was actually afterwards.

It was only a few blocks. I was literally around the corner from my hotel. Then suddenly I noticed someone running up behind me. It was some guy, looking messed up. He got in front of me and said something in Spanish that I didn’t understand, but I knew what he was saying. He pulled out a knife. It was about 10 inches long. Strangely, the first thing that popped into my head was “Call that a knife? That’s not a knife!” but unfortunately I had forgotten to bring my machete with me. The knife looked old, rusty and blunt but I wasn’t about to test that hypothesis. In my right pocket I had 40 dollars which I gave him. My left pocket had my new phone. Please don’t take that I was thinking. He patted my left pocket and took the phone. It’s really worth much less to you than it is to me, I was thinking, but reasoned discussions weren’t taking place right now. I indicated that I had nothing left. He patted the rest of my clothes. Luckily he didn’t feel my credit card in one of the pockets of my fake leather jacket. He ran off.

I’d lost the equivalent of about 90 dollars or 60 quid. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world. I had adrenaline running through me but I didn’t feel bad. In fact, the worst thing was that I remember Doctor James had said that his brother was one of the few people that had been to Quito and not been robbed. I wanted the bragging rights to say the same thing. Having thought about it afterwards that fact – the threat to my ego – was the thing that pissed me off the most. Sixty quid I could live without.

The other thing was that I would have to go back to the same place and buy another phone tomorrow. I thought about it for a bit and decided I could deal with that too.