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Published: October 6th 2004
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Our first week has gone so quickly, we have had between 4 and 6 hours per day of Spanish lessons, so no lazing about in the sun for us - yet! Quito is an interesting spot, it is a big city with all the pollution and dangers that come with a big city but it has given us some giggles during the week, not least the sight of a Lada with a Mercedes badge!
We have spent some time walking around Quito exploring the sights, practising our spanish and trying out the local food - almeurzas and empanandas. We have only once had any unpleasant side effects! We also visited a populated volcanic crater.
We have visited
La Mitad del Mundo (the middle of the world, 0 0´0´´), both the official incorrect line and the unofficial correct line!!! There are two different lines complete with monuments and parks. The first was plotted by the French who built a monument and got it totally wrong and the second by a farmer using GPS.
We also visited the
Guayasamin museum, ´La Capilla del Hombre´, this was amazing. Oswaldo Guayasamin was an Ecuadorian artist who only died a few years ago,
The monument
The French monument at Mitad del Mundo. you may have heard of his most famous work - La Ternura. His work protests against many of the great injustices of the past century, the Bay of Pigs, the mines in Chili, Vietnam, Nazi concentration camps and poverty, war and starvation around the world and in his own country. He also did some amazingly tender and moving works and he also designed the building that his work is displayed in, the building of which was funded by UNESCO.
We are booked on a 7 day Galápagos tour starting on Friday - we can´t wait. We will then be hiking up Guagua Pichincha the day after we get back. This is a live volcano which has erupted in the last ten years. In Galápagos we will get to snorkel with lots of fish and sea life and we will get to observe (up close) sea lions, iguanas, tortoises, blue and red-footed boobies and lots lots more (which have no fear of humans). Pete is determined to get a t-shirt with ´I love boobies´written on it....
...To continue, the day before we left for Galapagos was a lovely day so we set out in the morning to post a
Volcanic Crater
Populated volcanic crater. few things home and to climb the
Basilica. At the post-office we were helped by a lovely old woman who had Pete climbing up on the roof of her little stall to fetch a tube for a poster that I wanted to send home. After that we set out for the basilica, we had been warned that it was a pretty scary climb and it lived up to all of the reports. We first climbed up three flights of stone steps to the roof, from there we had to cross a sort of bridge that ran along the inside of the roof and from there out on to one of the towers. From there we had to continue up in to the tower using a spiral staircase on the outside of the tower. It wouldn´t have exactly been easy to fall off the tower but definitely possible! The views from the top of the tower were great, we could see all around Quito and to the surrounding hills. The climb down the tower was nearly worse but we made it back down into the roof, only to discover that there was a further tower to climb, up in to the
Spanish Lessons
With our spanish teacher Narda. belfry. This was higher than the first, we ascended a spiral staircase up to a level inside the clock faces of the tower, only to find from there we had to climb rusty ladders to the top. With each level that we climbed we were convinced that it had to be the last but the ladders went on and on. We finally reached the top which had little more than wire mesh to stand on. We were holding on for dear life, but there were some absolute lunatics that had climbed out on to a ledge on the outside of the tower - insane!!!
....continued 17th October (post Galapagos)
We arrived back on Friday from Galapagos, with one night to rest we were up at 6.30am the following morning for our hike up
Guagua Pichincha, our guide Steve picked us up at 7ish in a big jeep and we set off out of Quito. He took one look at the two of us and told us that we looked like fun climbers compared to the other guys in the group (just because they had cool climbing gear) and asked us if we wanted to do the full distance -
The Basilica
Climbing the Basilica in Quito talk about setting us a challenge!! Of course we said we would. The drive up to Guagua was pretty rocky and our driver, like most Ecuadorians was insane behind the wheel. He argued with the guide about which direction to take and once stopped in the middle of the road before reversing back to the road he was meant to take. He couldn´t understand giving way to an ambulance and he took corners like he was in a mini and not a massive jeep. But anyway we made it in one piece to the point that we began the climb from. When we started to climb, even though we were just walking, we were breathing as hard as if we were running. We were already at 3,670 metres (Quito is only 2,850 metres). The climb to the refuge before the summit took about 2.5 hours and the guide urged a few of us to continue to the summit. One girl had to wait at the refuge, she had been badly misinformed that a 12km hike to 4,781 metres was a perfect opportunity to break in new boots and had massive blisters! We started up to the summit and by this
point we were both feeling the effects of the altitude, headaches and slight nausea. It became alot colder the higher that we got and there was alot of scrambing over rocks involved. We finally made it to the summit and Pete immediately whipped out the GPS, it was reading 4,786 metres. We could see the volcano crater away in the distance but by this point the clouds had descended on the summit so the visibility wasn´t great. The hike down took us about half the time and we took plenty of steeper shortcuts of the main path. We had the best sleep in a while last night, I don´t think even a volcano erupting beside us would have woken us. Baños next....
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northernrich
Boobies
I also love boobies and think Peter should definitely get a t-shirt proclaiming his love. Here is some information I have garnered for you about boobies: There are three kinds of booby. Despite obvious colour differences, boobies are very similar in shape.The origin of the name booby is less clear, probably derived from Spanish "bobo", or clown, in reference to their habit of landing on ships at sea and being easily approached - and killed - by sailors.