Ecuador: Quito

arrived quite late in quito and felt really spaced out and weird, so went to bed fairly early on our first night.

then... went out and explored quito, had a wander around the old town down to the main square, plaza de indepencia. it was rather nice, quite square like with a church, palace and government type building around the edges. there was also some kind of protest going on, not sure what for but with our magnificent spanish, managed to windle it down to something about abortion? there was a woman dresed only in 2 pieces of paper with writing on covering her modesty, and then some others on massively high stilts.

then we walked along to a basilica just near our hostel and climbed up the spire on what can only be described as a very ropy wire-metal ladder which went up the side of the tower on the outside. was very very scared and felt a bit sick but once i got to the top had the most stunning views of the city! worth it i guess. and then i remembered i had to climb back down, which was even less fun than the ascent!

so after a walk to the new town, went into a supermarket and picked up some picnic stuff and went and sat in the sunshine. burnt my nose and now i look like rudolf! it was really boiling but it gets very cold and rainy in the afternoons. so we headed to a museum, very much like the british museum, but ecuadorian, to avoid the downpour. and a downpour it was! on the way home we were forced into a little cafe to have a bottle of coke and some over boiled corn on the cob, which had the texture of potato? hmm, well we tried it.

had ecuadorian night here at the hostel last night which was really fun. met another londoner and a crazy lady from nz who made us play drinking games. i was so good that i only had to drink one glass of lager, result! the others were not so talented and ended up a bit worst for wear. tam and claud went out with some of the people from here, laura was sick so couldnt quite face it and i didnt really feel for it so took myself off to bed. there is no sign of movement in our room at the mo, so i crept out to come and do my first blog entry.

we're heading down to banos today as we have to get to cuzco by the 2nd. we were hoping to go to cotopaxi for the day but all the tours are booked up and we dont really have enough time to wait until tomorrow, which is a great shame, but a good excuse to come back!

am on a very old school computer which appears to have no usb thing, so pictures are going to have to wait until we find somewhere with slightly more modern technology.