PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL: Back in the terminal the wheels were still at their cadences beginning with a whoosh as the doors close - eleven seconds whirring followed by pulses, throbs, double-thump, whoosh and silence as I imagined parallel sets of tourists issuing from the gondolas, one side coming, the other going, and cadences, gondolas every thirty seconds, the wheels forever turning.
In reality, only a few other visitors were there when we were there, and most of the gondolas went through empty. Even so, it was hard not to pause each time the cadence reached the double-thump, whoosh, and at the silence look for the invisible families streaming up and down the mountain in even-cadenced rhapsody. I had a few moments to take it all in before we joined the line and rode the cable back from the volcanic frontier, where continents collide along the ring of fire, to the wheels and deals of Quito.
