There’s a restaurant on Sandia Peak called Ten three. It’s 10,300 feet above sea level. This year, I have had a more acute awareness of the number of feet I am above sea level. The folks who usher you up and down the mountain tell you to be aware of the altitude and drink lots of water. Altitude? I could tell Cas was thinking the same thing as I was. Altitude? That’s cute. Let me tell you about Cusco.
We would never actually say that, but it was rolling around in our brains as we waited in line to board the tramway up the mountain. And boy, did we ever wait. You see, there was a little, teeny tiny bit of lightning and thunder at the peak of the mountain, and the tramway shuts down when that happens. After about the first hour and a half of literally waiting for the storm to pass, we started looking for a different way to have my birthday dinner. The entry tickets are all time stamped, of course, and we were growing in hunger and frustration as we watched our time tick by. We’d narrowed our restaurant choices and were just about to summon an Uber to take us away when the service to the top reopened. Hallelujah!
It took some time to board and some more time to get there, but when we got to the top, there was a visible rainbow. Talk about a sign from the heavens that we were right to be patient. Still, an hour and a half after we had planned to be there meant we were plenty hungry when we were seated for dinner. As we approached the restaurant and waited just a few more moments for the table, we saw the sun set from the mountain. Okay, that was pretty great. Maybe the timing worked out perfectly after all.
Today, we’re awake before dawn. It is quite unlike Cas to do that voluntarily, but this one is special. We have a sunrise balloon flight. We watched the sun set from a mountain last night. We can watch it rise from a hot air balloon today. We honestly still haven’t put together our photo album yet, though. Maybe that would have been a smart thing to do while we waited for the tramway to reopen, but it didn’t occur to either of us. We’ll get there, though. We should have some pretty amazing photos after this morning wraps up. Beyond that, there’s a wine and music festival to attend, then we wind it all down and have to return to our lives.
Fun moment to mention before I sign off for my floating flight, though- the waiter last night asked if we were celebrating anything. I said I was turning fifty. He said, “Well, you look great; happy birthday!” And I said, “Thank you; it’s dark in here.”
See you when we’re back on the ground, friends!
(This was the view just before we came back down…)
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