Quito

I arrived last night in Quito and all is well -- except that my luggage decided it preferred Panama. We had a great tour of the city today. The geography of the city is amazing with lots of mountains and winding roads. There is hardly any flat terrain to be found. The hills combined with the already high altitude of the city, 9,000+ feet, make it challenging for the cars and people to get around. The cars just don't have any power at this altitude. I'm not huge into churches and that sort of thing so the most interesting part of the tour for me was people watching and the equator visit. They did lots of interesting little experiments on the equator line -- balancing an egg on end, try to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed (don't ask me why it's hard to do on the equator), draining water swirls counter- clockwise north of the equator and opposite south of the equator, etc. The people here seem to be of two sorts. Those of Spanish decent and those of indigenous decent who look just like American Indians.   We do our first acclimization hike tomorrow that will take me higher than I've ever been...~16,000'.