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Presents at Coffee Tree
Sporting 'Cuenca Crew' T-shirts if you look very carefully! Caught the overnight bus to Quito once again and actually managed to sleep for most of it which is always a good thing. Arrived and walked to our usual haunt of Coffee Tree for breakfast (or in my case chocolate cake and hot chocolate - I needed a sugar rush!) before heading off to find a hostal. Had to tour four hostals before finding one (two were full and two were expensive - a whole $8 a night!) Ended up in Centro del Mundo - a so called 'party hostal' according to the Lonely Planet but looked perfectly alright.
Checked in and then split off into three groups to go on a re-con mission about Galapagos which we are determined to book whilst we are here as every travel agent seems to promise 'brilliantly cheap' last minute deals naturally. Actually managed to find a couple of really good deals at the rather worringly named 'Happy Gringo' (wonder what they were on when they named it) but Matt and Jack managed to trump us with one for all of $1180 for an eight day cruise on a catamaran. Booked it and paid our deposits - rather worrying having to walk
Birthday girl
And pink champagne! down the street with $500 stuffed in your bra but it's always the safest place to keep stuff!
One of Lou's friends was randomly in Quito having travelled down from Colombia so we met up with him and went for food. Absolutley barmy but what can you expect from a friend of Lou's!? His mother's actually had to take to emailing Lou to ask if she's heard from hm as he quite happily said he hadn't phoned home the whole time he'd been here. Another guy who was staying at the hostal found us and took us to an 'English' pub called the Queen Victoria rather unsurprisingly as it was on Reina Victoria. Very smoky and bit odd to have an American behind the bar but was actually a very good attempt. The weather decided to help us by becoming overcast and grey and before long, raining.
The others came out to meet us for dinner at an Indian a street away from our hostal before heading back to sleep.
Wopke up early the next morning staring at a dark blue ceiling with stars painted all over it. Interesting decor at this place! Went to have breakfast
and actually managed to transport all of Sophie's presents to the cafe without her noticing much. The constant 'why's Kat holding the bag open (I was trying not to crush the presents), all her stuff will fall out!' of yesterday didn't even give it away. She had even had little presents sent through from home including one with wads of cash wrapped up in top - very glad no one at customs decided to open that!
Headed off for a spell of shopping where Lou bought a bright pink cat umbrella with a whistle of which she is both prodigiously proud and rather worringly fond (she named it Consuela). We found a T-shirt shop where we all bough cheap T-shirts that we got printed with 'Cuenca Crew' - yes, we are that sad. I also found a giant T-shirt to cover up in when we go to Galapagos. Planning ahead or what?!
Had a chilled day before returning to the hostal to get ready and to sample the 'Puro' that Joe had brought from Colombia. I preferred the pink champagne! We went for food at a Mexican where we were joined by Lou's friend Joe as well as
another Joe we met at the hostal, Imogen, Caroline, Georgia and Emma (Tamsin and Claire are in the Galaps and Sarah's laid up in bed because of her leg). Imo had made the most stupendous chocolate and M&M cake ever as well as corn flake cakes for Matt. Headed out to Zocalo after having demolished the cake where we met Ben and Ezim and ended the night salsa-ing in Mayo.
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Anna
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Yaaay! Updates!
Hooray Hooray! You finally updated your blog. Do you have any idea how boring your last shopping list was getting?...... Mind you there seemed to a lot of shopping happening in this entry too..... Hmmm, did you go on a gap year or a 6 month shopping expedition? Just curious.