My iPhone: Gone.
Ultimately, I don’t care about the gadget. That can be replaced. What bothers me is that now, some lucky Ecuadorean has access to a lot of the details of my life. I’ve just spent the last few hours changing passwords, suspending accounts, double-checking insurance, and basically cursing myself nonstop.
Anyway, I think this spells the end of my one-a-day entries. I’ll keep up the blog as best I can, but a big part of my keeping in touch abilities is gone.
Not the best thanksgiving I’ve ever had.
Although, really, the rest of my day was great. I went down to CarpeDM tours (next to the Secret Garden hostel) and got some great information on a Galapagos island tour (which I may very well be doing). Then I went up into the hostel, and met up with Robby and two other fun people, Mindy and Matt and we all went up to the Teleferiqo, a giant cable car ride up to the Pichincha mountains to the west of Quito. I got my first real taste of the problems of exertion at altitude. We hiked from the top of the cable car ride (4100 meters) for an exhausting two hours, needing to stop fairly often to try to catch our breathe. Not an easy task without, you know, air. But, with that exhaustion came some spectacular sights (which I cannot provide, n0 longer having a camera… sniff) and my first glimpse of Cotopaxi, the giant, snow-capped volcano which generally dominates the southern skyline of Quito, but has been hidden behind clouds since my arrival.
And so, the day wasn’t a complete loss, and on this Thanksgiving day, I am very thankful that I still have my family and friends (though many of them are thousands of miles away), my health (though that doesn’t mean much at 4100 meters, evidently), and enough money to keep this adventure going for a while (though I’ll probably lose most of it when I finally book that Galapagos trip).