I saw it happening in slow motion.  Repeating ‘brakes, brakes, brakes’ over and over with increasing volume and tempo didn’t help. 

The collision seemed pretty violent, both cars bucking slowly towards a busy street.  Once Anat pushed in the clutch, we stop nudging the other car into the intersection.  Before I continue, I have to give grande props to Anat for driving in Quito.  Ignoring the fact that Ecuadorians are completely insane when they get behind the wheel, the car she was driving was an older model Ford Explorer with a manual transmission.  A mission vehicle, it was probably purchased for the purpose of transporting missionaries to various locales.  In the city, it was bigger than 90% of the other cars on the road, and Quito has some hills akin to the streets in San Francisco.  The intersection was at the top of a clutch-burning hill, so keeping the truck moving was a priority.  The car in front of us (a Chevy Sueno, or some other crappy small Chevy that never gets sold in the US) gave a good fake pass at entering the intersection.  Anat assumed the little car had gone ahead, when in fact it was hiding underneath the right front bumper. It looked bad from inside the car, but luckily it wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought.  The mission truck sustained no injuries, and the Chevy’s bumper was just scraped up and slightly misaligned.  Nobody was hurt (we were driving a mission vehicle after all so we had protection from above ;).  The short story is that $125 later, we were off on our way.  Susie, of course, did all the talking.  Considering that the guy we hit seemed more excited to get Susie’s cell phone number than the cash, I would recommend to everyone the following:  when traveling in strange and foreign lands, it would be wise to bring along sunblock, deet, and a cute blonde who speaks the language.   Prior to the car crash, we had a very informative meeting with a Doctor who is head of the Infectious Disease division of a private hospital in Quito.  He is a missionary as well, and had an excellent perspective on the status of Dengue in Ecuador.  In addition, he has worked throughout Latin America and is well acquainted with the status of dengue in other locales.  He predicts that a serious dengue eruption will occur in Peru within the next couple of years, further motivating our cause.   After the meeting, we took a trip to Pichincha, one of the mountains nearest the city.  There is a gondola that runs a couple of thousand feet up the mountain.  As we hiked around the top, we discussed the possibility of climbing Cotopaxi towards the end of the trip.  We decided that there would not be time, which is a shame.  It would have been nice to have stepped foot on the glacier that is rapidly receding.  Chances are, by the time anyone could return to climb on it, the glacier maybe largely gone.  Stupid global warming. Later that night, we took the Welty’s out to one of their favorite restaurants with a view out over the city.  The food was great and we toasted to friends in far places.

-Tanner