We've landed!

At last, the waiting's over... At about 4.30am last Wednesday, after a REALLY rubbish night's sleep (not to mention a really rubbish couple of weeks of preparation), we got in a taxi at my sister Claire's house in Surbiton. By tea-time - after a connecting flight to Madrid, followed by a 10-hour Iberia long-haul with but one Jennifer Aniston rom-com for entertainment plus a head-spinning six-hour time change backwards - we'd landed in Quito, capital of Ecuador and the base for our first four weeks of travelling.

And the good news is: it's bloody brilliant here. Beautiful historic buildings, friendly people, volcanoes and mountains all around, three-course lunches for less than a quid - and wall-to-wall World Cup chaos thanks to Ecuador's unprecedented qualification for the knock-out stages. There is literally a TV blaring World Cup action in every house, shop and market stall - we even found one in the cloth-touching 100-ft heights of the city's unfinished basilica when we climbed the clock tower this morning. God knows what will happen if a) they draw England in round two, as seems likely and b) beat them, which is equally likely on current evidence. It's entirely possible that a state of emergency will be declared.

As a 'soft landing' we're staying in a small hotel in the heart of the city's old town that was formerly a colonial mansion. It's unlikely we'll get to enjoy such luxury again: the plan is to bunk up in hostels and share bathrooms (if not too many bedrooms, hopefully) for the rest of trip. But first, we have to negotiate our lack of Spanish, which is already proving a head-banging pain in the arse: what a surprise, both of us thought we were better than we actually are. Luckily, we have enrolled in an intensive five-hours-a-day, four-days-a-week course in a Spanish school that's situated in a cloud forest about 50 miles outside Quito. Apparently we are the only students at present, which may have something to do with the World Cup being on and the spectre of them not having a telly... If that's the case, I'm heading for the nearest town and taking my chances, espanyol or not.

Anyway, that's enough about the World Cup and enough from me, quite frankly. I'm off to learn some vocab - more (including pictures) in a couple of days.

Rob

PS Adele is also on this holiday and has asked me to point out that she is also having a nice time.

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