Jan 31st - Feb 10th - Our first week in Quito

If anyone is ever tempted to fly into Quito, then don’t! If by some miracle there’s not too much fog above Quito to land, you’ll just have a terrifying high speed hurtle down the runway. In their wisdom the Quito city planners decided to build an airport with a mountain at the end of the runway - not too good with the high-speed landings (necessary because of the altitude).

However, if you’re not that lucky, then you might experience something like our 40 hour jaunt from London to Quito to Guayaquil (Ecuador’s second city) to Quito to Guayaquil and finally to Quito again. Somehow our 19 hour flight turned into the trip from hell. Still, we got there eventually! We weren’t looking (or smelling) too great after spending a night sleeping in Guayaquil airport!

Suck that belly in chump - you´ve still got 20 hours to go!

As for Quito itself, what can we say, it’s everything you’d expect of a World Heritage Site - stunning colonial architecture surrounded on all sides by the fog covered Andes (a lot of them active volcanoes - a tad unnerving!).

Quito old town - pretty

Typical Quito surrounded by the Andes

We arrived just in time for Carnival weekend, and being stupid foreigners we weren’t aware of the custom of throwing water at people. We looked grumpy! But Ecuadorians are very friendly and eager to tell you about the best places to visit in their beautiful country.

Quito Basilica - very impressive!

Ecuadorian food is … interesting. ‘Typical’ Ecuadorian cuisine consists of unspecified ‘meat’, curry sauce, chips and rice (hmm, double carbs) - nice, but it gets kinda samey day-in day-out. No matter, they have their own take on food from elsewhere in the world (wok-fried spaghetti anyone?).

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