Quito and Banos

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So, we finally arrived safe and sound in Quito. Met the peeps who will be our truck mates for the next 8 weeks. A really nice bunch, pretty much all of them are on career breaks and 5 of 15 are accountants. What a percentage! So a lot of green, yuppie style travellers let loose on South America!

Went to the equator on the first day, this was one of the things I (Becky) really wanted to visit, for some reason get excited about the fact that you can balance an egg on the head of a pin there (as the gravitational force is exactly equal on the equator and so pulls the egg down). After a bonkers bus ride where each bus we got on terminated about 3 stops on, and we had to find another (4 in total - glad that my Spanish is coming along or we would have been shafted), we arrived at the official site. There they have a red line which was good for photos but the French actually built the place and GOT IT WRONG! Chumps. So the real equator, measured by GPS is 150 metres to the side of the official site, and there is a cool museum where they show you water swirling in different directions on each side of the equator, and I did balance an egg on the head of a pn. Quality. Unfort was so excited to do it forgot to take any pics but made Rick waste about 10 minutes of video camera on me doing it!Also saw a real shrunken head from a tribe of mentalists. Nice.

Left Quito to go to Banos, a little town in a ravine at the foot of three huge mountains, one of which is a live volcano, and the town was evacuated in 1999 as they thought it was going to blow. Went into the jungle for a trek, got v hot, saw some interesting flora and fauna (!) went in a canoe into a national park etc. Was cool.

Also Rick went Canyoning in Banos - which involves jumping into, absieling and flying foxing down large waterfall canyons. Becky stayed in her hammock.

Weather was really cool - literally in Quito and Banos - much like England as we were so high up.

Off to the hot deserts of North Peru now.

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Comments

[G Dunk]

Nice bit of tree-hugging there bro
:)