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Published: December 27th 2007
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Triona at the equator
Triona described this as the best day of her life. Hey everyone
We have come to the last 2 weeks of our trip in south america and its not till this point in the trip that you start realising that its nearly time to leave and realise how fast the time actually goes.
To celebrate our last few weeks we decided to embark on a 4 day white water kayaking course. The course aims to take you from a complete novice to a kayaking guru in just 4 days. The 1st day was interesting with our inability to paddle straight being the main problem and our instructor just kept saying "no its fine, its fine, your doing really well". I would have almost believed him except for the fact that i was turning around in circles constantly. However by the end of the 1st day we could at least paddle and along with this do all sorts of interesting manouvers in the water.
The next 2 days were spent learning all sorts of cool tricks that mostly aim to stop you from falling in the water when things get a bit rough. The 3rd day was probably the hardest with the main purpose of the day being on
Pete
Peter equally excited to be at the equator eskimo rolls. For those who aren't sure thats how you get back up to a paddling position from being under the water. Without getting out of the boat and swimming 400m to the shore. This was an extremely difficult thing to learn and took a whole day of swearing, getting very wet and drinking alot of river water.
The 4th day was our "graduation" and we had a whole day of kayaking on a class 4 river, this day turned out to be very challenging but was good fun all the same. Luckily our guide was very good as we weren't great at reading the river ahead (an important skill) and we became his shadow, following every path he took down the river. The whole course was really rewarding and it was amazing to see how much we improved i such a short space of time. If only we had more raging rivers at home!
After finishing the course we headed to Quito the capital of Equador which was to be our last destination on our trip, we had a few days to look around the capital and get ourselves ready to flyout to the UK. In a
The excitement
Peter collapsed from excitement luckily he lived to tell the tale. fitting farewell to the trip we had a few things planned and wanted to make the most of out time.
The city of Quito is famous for the sites of the old city, this is an area of town packed full of old buildings and cathedrals and is a major tourist draw. Triona and I walked from our hostel to the old city and although it was nice it seemed a bit repetitive to be looking at old spanish styled building again and with large numbers of tourists around a few hours was enough.
Just north of the city lies the Equator and as is a must see sight on any visit, for where else can you stand in 2 hemispheres at once and marvel at how you are standing at the centre point on the world. This is not the most exciting place in the world as all that is really there is; a big line, some statues and some very expensive retuarants. However we made the trip to the equator and we also discovered that the monument is actually at the real equator and that someone made a mistake and they built all the statues and
Monument
The monument and indicators at the equator, it was actually a nice place to spend a few hours. monuments about 300 metres away from the real thing. Still we had our photos taken and enjoyed the thrill of being in 2 hemispheres at once.
Peter felt it necessary to finish his trip off with a bang of sorts and therefore decided that he would once again strap on his stackhat and cycle down a volcano. Triona on the other hand decided that after her somewhat negative experience with bikes she would stay in quito and take part in more leaisurely persuits. The bike trip was down Volcano Cotopaxi one of the most perfectly formed volcanoes in the world, unfortunately the top was obscured by cloud but it was pretty awesome to say the least. On the trip a 4WD takes you to the national park drives you to about 4000m gives you a bike and away you go. The first bit is very rough and very steep and the rest id more sedate. On Peters trip after arriving at the top of the volcano and getting out of the 4WD it was then necessary to hold onto the 4WD to stop yourself being blown off the volcano. After much holding and trying not to freeze to death
Cotopaxi
The summit of the volcano we got our bikes and away we went. The first part was very steep and very rough with two of the 3 cyclists in our group getting punctures, (Peter wasnt one of them) it was also made a bit harded by the group of cattle that graze on the side of the volcano deciding to cross the road, however they had mostly cleared by the time we got near them and just watched us with confusion as we went past. After the initial descent the ride was a cross country trip around the national park. It was really beautiful and well worth the effort as every time you looked around any pain in your legs immediately disappeared.
After the excitement of our last few days in South America it was time to leave and while we sat at the airport staring out the window we realised that although we had travelled through 8 countries and had been moving constantly for 5 months we had seen nothing of what this amazing continent had to offer and we would definately definaltey be back.
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