Quito

On the 16th of September we arrived in Quito after a horrendous night in Lima. It´s a long story, maybe we´ll tell it some time. We had to fly via Lima to Quito, we´ll have a word with Susie, our travel agent, at some stage about this.

It was a pleasure to arrive in a city so friendly and accomodating to tourists.We caught a taxi to our hostel, Posada del Maple, and checked in. Tara realised a few minutes later that she had left her wallet in the taxi. A bit of drama unfolded over the following few days, but I will cut a long story short. Tara eventually got her wallet back, a nice man found it in a park and e-mailed her. Her cash was gone, but all her cards were still there. Unfortunately she had already cancelled her credit cards, but some phone calls and e-mails had new ones arriving in Quito about two weeks later.

Posada del Maple, is a nice enough hostel. Not the cheapest, but breakfast is included and it is clean and close to everything you need in the new town. The new town, La Mariscal, is very much geared towards tourists, you don´t really need much spanish to get by there. We headed for a bar sraight away, to drwon Tara´s wallet sorrows, and ended up drinking a lot of beer, sangria and mojitos.
The next day we took a taxi to the old town and did some sightseeing. We started at the Plaza del la Independencia, where the changing of the guards, or something to that effect, was taking place.

We walked around for most of the rest of the day, going into one of the cathedral museums, can´t for the life of me remember which one, and generally just absorbing the atmosphere of the city. Not once did we feel unsafe, even when we walked all the way back to La Mariscal.

The next day, we went up the Teleferiquo (cable car) with Neil, a Kiwi we met at the hostel.

Neil and I walked for another hour and a half towards the summit of the mountain, another name I don´t know, but turned around before we got there because everyone we met said that the view didn´t change and you couldn´t actually see the crater.

)

We met Amy (English) and Jason (Aussie), a married couple, in the cable car on the way back down. Turned out they were heading for Galapagos on the same plane as us the next day and we arranged to catch a taxi together. We also arranged to meet at 5 that evening to have a few drinks and go out for dinner. Dinner ended up being a cheap, but delicious and filling, curry for only $5 each. Including a beer! God bless South America.

________________________________________________________________

Back in Quito after the galapagos, on 29 September, we stayed at the Secret Garden hostel. Nico had recommended it to us, as he had volunteered here last year. The minute we got there, we went up to the roof terrace to have a beer and enjoy the view.

We had dinner there too, it was BBQ night so we couldn´t resist. After dinner they lit the fire in the wheelbarrow and we had a few more beers with the other guests.

The following day we went to the Mitad del Mundo, the middle of the world. It is a museum centre on the Equator, about 25 miles out of Quito. We took photos of the monument that was built in 1979 where they thought the Equator was.

We then went to the "other museum", Inti-nan, 240m north where the Equator was measured using GPS, so the frenchies didn´t get it too wrong. Here they have different huts made up to show how different cultures in Equador lived and live. We even got a go at trying to skewer a cactus leaf with a blow dart.

The museum also lets you perform several experiments on the Equator line. Tara managed to balance an egg on a nail, and received a certificate for her trouble. They show you how a basin of water goes down the drain in two different directions on either side of the Equator and straight down in the middle. As well as some muscle resistance tests on the line and off it. Very interesting.

We then went back into the main museum to have lunch and watch some local dancing.

That night we ate at the hostel again, and then drank a little too much around the fire.
The next morning we packed and headed off to the Secret Garden in Cotopaxi with 9 other guests and one volunteer. We´d heard great things about it from Nico, James (in Bogota) and all the Volunteers and guests at the Secret Garden in Quito.