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So after a great 2 weeks at home it was time to say goodbye to PG Tips, Eastenders and of course Alfie and begin the second part of my trip.
Flying into Quito was an experience in itself. An Ecuadorian lady chatted to me for the entire 14 hr flight in Spanish (I´ve never nodded my head so much to pretend I understand what she was saying) and four Ecuadorian 5/6 year olds spent the whole flight beating each other up.
I arrived into Quito the next afternoon. The plane landed between bright green mountains and as Quito is around 2000m altitude there were little white clouds floating around everywhere. Of couse, it was also raining. It rains every afternoon here in Ecuador!
The sign at the airport warned passengers not to run because of the altitude but at the time I didn´t pay much attention. I grabbed my bags (after watching a dog come round in his kennel on the luggage belt, I did chuckle) and caught a taxi to my hostel. After settling in for half an hour, I joined the other folks in my room for something to eat and then spent the next 16
hours sleeping.
The next day was a compelte a wash out. Headaches and nausea had set in because of the altitude. Even walking to the supermarket felt like running a marathon but I was told symptoms faded after a few days.
The next morning I met 3 English girls from Birmingham, Alice, Nick and Katie. We spent Friday walking around the old town, killing ourselves walking up the Basilica steps to see the view of the city, helped some Ecuadorian students practice their English by taking part in an interview and then visited a few of the town´s squares. The town was buzzing because of May Day weekend and the amount of street sellers were amazing...of course not really selling anything useful unless you desperately need some pegs! The Old town was pretty but after being warned of not staying around at night we headed back to the New Town where our hostel was. The New Town is generally filled with bars, restaurants, the Mariscal market and not much else. We joined the rest of the hostel for drinks and then ate at a Mongolian restuarant where you can choose the ingredients for your own stir fry. I
was already excited at the prospect of vegetables on the second day of my trip!
The following day we had a lazy morning but in the afternoon headed to the Botanical Gardens which were quite spectacular (I think I´m getting old). We got caught in the huge afternoon storm and then headed to the park to watch the last few parts of an Ecuadorian music festival.
On Sunday we headed to Mitel del Mundo.. the Equator! It was a cramped 1hr and 30 mins on a local bus sat on the floor above the engine burning our bums. But I guess this is what they call a ´cultural experience´. We found the right stop (follow other tourists), paid our entrance and found the monument and line representing the middle of the world. Only, they don´t tell you that the French actually got it wrong and were actually around 200m out from the real equator. So we took photos at the ´fake´ equator, stood on the fake North and South hemispheres and walked around the small sqaure which kind of resembled Disney World.
After, we made our way to the real equator just down the road (again follow
other tourists) which was discovered not along ago using GPS tools. The museum was great fun. We watched water turn in different directions on the North and South hemisphere, I balanced an egg on a nail which apparently you can´t do anywhere else (I have the certificate to prove it!) and we also tried walking along the equator with our eyes shut..pretty much impossible. A man in an Ecuadorian mask chased me (it wasn´t funny nor clever), we saw a real shrunken child head (a tribal tradition) and also a pickled Anaconda. It felt like a school trip to the science museum!
We spent the evening back in the New Town watching a film and had pretty much all come to an agreement that Quito wasn´t the place for us. I had planned to do a week of Spanish school but neither feeling safe in the Old Town or New Town at night and after hearing one too many dodgy stories the four of us decided to move on to Baños.
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