Quito, Ecuador 22nd - 26th September 2010

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Quito sits in a bowl in the mountains with buildings lining the hillsides on either side.and the main City in the valley. The City is 2800 metres above sea level and often holds the cloud and also some smog, causing it to be a little wet in the afternoon, at least at this time of the year. It also can be quite cool at night, due to the altitude. The traffic is on a par with Bogota or Bangkok - in other words hectic, where as a pedestrian you have to be especially careful to negotiate crossing the main roads.

Quito lies just 8 minutes (in longitudinal terms) South of the Equator and outside the City there are places to visit where you can effectively stand in the middle of the World and witness the Equator.

But on arrival, we had more urgent things to do, namely find a place to stay for at least one night. We had pre-chosen an apartment Hotel, one of the few places that met our requirements and budget, But we had not pre-booked. The Filatelia apart hotel had a room (USD38) or suite (USD49) for the night, that night. But were full for the next 3 nights. The girl on reception was very helpful though and said she could help us find an alternative for the following nights. So rather than look around that evening, we said we would take a room for the one night. As it turned out, we paid for a room but got a suite. It was a little tatty, with an electric shower but had two bedrooms, a little kitchen and lounge/dining room and, at last, a WiFi connection that really worked. For USD38 we had no complaints.

That evening we went and ate at a restaurant chain called El Hornero, where we ate Pizza Hut-type deep pan pizza and had a good bottle of Chilean wine for USD25. Afterwards, we went from a walk down one of Quito's main streets, Rio Amazonas, and looked at a couple of travel agents shop windows, in search of a good Galapagos deal. The first one we looked at was Last minute Galapagos tours, which had an 8 day luxury cruise for USD1450. It looked tempting, but we thought there must be other deals around and resolved to look around the next morning.

We went in 3 travel agents and enquired, but none had offers that could match the quality-price ratio that we had seen last night and enquired about first this morning. Patricia, the Last minute travel agent also believed we wouldn't find a better deal and said she'd reserve the places for us, just in case. By the end of the morning, we had agreed with her and decided on this 8 day tour on the Odyssey boat, that is big, but only caters for16 passengers.

Before we went and committed ourselves, we had a Hotel to find and a Hotel to check out of. We hoped to talked to the receptionist at the Filatelia who was there the previous night and who spoke a bit of English. But it was not to be and we struggled to make ourselves understood with the two other girls on reception, who spoke no English. We explained we were looking for a good Hotel around USD50. What you have to be careful in Equador is the 22% VAT (tax) and service charged at Hotels. Therefore we tried to make it clear that we wanted something for USD50 including tax and service. There wasn't much nearby, but we were told of the Tambo Real, which was USD60 including tax and it was within walking distance. So after a brief phone call to confirm availability we loaded up with our backpacks and trudged 10 minutes to get to this Hotel. As you've no doubt guessed, it was USD60 plus tax and service. So we trudged back to the Filatelia and explained again the situation to these girls who really were doing their best. In the end I pulled out our list of Trip Advisor-recommended places and after seeing it was reasonably close, got them to phone one on our list that they didn't deal with. Finally it worked.

The Folklore Hotel is USD39 per night including taxes and is about 6 or 7 blocks up the hill from the Amazonas main street. It has good sized rooms, a hot shower, good breakfast and WiFi that works It is also in a quiet area, despite being close to the final approach track for Quito airport. We needed no more. So with the aid of a taxi we checked in, left 16 lbs of our dirty washing with the laundry next door (which cost USD7) and then walked back down to Amazonas to get some money and sign up for our Galapagos trip.

The ATMs were a little hesitant to start with, but we found a Bank (ProduBanco) where we could pull out USD1000 at a time and with 4 cards we could get what we needed for the trip and the spending money for a few days after that - something we'd never have managed in Colombia.

We went to confirm our Galapagos trip on the Odyssey cruise ship - whose offer was more than USD6000 less than the Internet advertised price. We decided we would stay on the Galapagos for a couple of days extra after the cruise, so Felicity could do some diving. Patricia at the travel agents was very professional and organised everything for us, only forgetting our request to stay on. But as we picked up the tickets the next day, we pointed out the mistake and she was able to resolve it quite quickly.

Having been to the Galapagos before and seen the quality of the boat, we were both very happy and excited at the prospect of our return. It also seemed like the boat was quite full and we would complete the full 8 day tour this time. Seven years ago, when we had been there last, everyone else left the boat four days into the trip and the tour company decided to stop the tour. We were left taking day trips with other groups, eating on land and sleeping on our boat, Millenium, which remained anchored in Santa Cruz. It was a disappointment which eventually got us a 50%!r(MISSING)efund.

Our hopes for a full 8 days were further boosted when we were shopping in the local Supermarket for more suntan lotion and bizarrely met with a Canadian couple, Don and Cathy, who it turned out had also booked for the Odyssey trip that day. At least we had one fun couple to travel with - but what would the rest be like. From then on, whenever we passed large, loud mouthed foreigners in the street, I would whisper to Felicity, 'they are on the Odyssey trip'. None of them were and as my Galapagos blog explains, we had a really nice group of people to sail with.

We did a few other chores on this our last but one full day in Quito, including Felicity getting a "20 minute“ pedicure, that ended up taking an hour and a half. They did do a really good job though. In the evening, we went to a Mexican restaurant that we had been to seven years ago, which in those days didn't include the guy with the large Mexican hat who was trying to pull in punters off the street to eat there. The food was pretty good, although Mexican food in Mexico was usually better.

We decided to have an early night, since the next day we would go to the Otavalo Market, which is almost 2 hours bus journey away back in the Northern hemisphere. Otavalo is a town, which is on the tourist trip tour list for which you could pay USD60 per head to visit the market and see a bit of the Volcano that lies above it and the volcanic lake that lies just South of it. The bus ride with the locals to Otavalo is USD2 per person each way.

Naturally we chose the local bus route, as we only wanted to do the market, didn't want to be fleeced by tour operators and in any case we'd been there before. We got a taxi to the bus station in the North of Quito, that cost USD6 and jumped on the bus to Otavalo which was leaving in the next few minutes. In the same way as the bus we arrived on, this one stopped numerous times to let people on and off, but we arrived there in just under 2 hours.

Otavalo is a pleasant town and on Saturdays and Tuesdays it is transformed by a market run by the local indigenous people. Felicity wanted to replace her woolen jacket, That I referred to as her "donkey jacket“. She had bought it seven years ago at our last visit to Otavalo and had just thrown away before we left Zurich. I was just going along for the ride, with no plans to buy anything.

In the end, I ended up buying two t-shirts and a case for my sunglasses. In addition, we went to the "Shenandoa“ Pie Shop in the market square (Poncho Plaza), where I had the best slice of lemon Meringue pie I have ever had, made with fresh lemons and a huge meringue. Because the pies were so good, I also had a pretty good Strawberry pie too.

After a little more looking around and the purchasing of a couple of other smaller things, we headed back to Quito and arrived back on a full bus about 5pm. We had to be up at 4:30am the next morning to catch a flight to the Galapagos, so after returning back to the hotel and packing, we went out to a nearby Chinese restaurant that Felicity had spotted in the taxi on our return from the bus station. It had a few chinese people eating there when we arrived and this recommendation proved to be a good one, as the food proved to be tasty, well served and much better value than we were used to in Zurich.

At 9pm we returned to the Folklore Hotel and headed for bed once we were sure that a taxi would be waiting for us at 5am to take us to the airport. We had a long old day in front of us, with the flight scheduled to take three and a half hours, including a stop in Guayaquil.

It seemed like only a few minutes after turning the lights out, that both the alarm on my watch and on my phone warned us it was 4:30am. We slowly came around, did last minute packing, teeth cleaning and so forth and headed for the door.

With punctuality that the Swiss would be proud of, the taxi arrived on time and we drove down the quiet darkened streets of Quito for the 15 minute journey to the airport.

Quito airport is located in the North part of the City with buildings all around and in the mountainous bowl that the rest of the City is in - which makes for spectacular departure and arrivals by air. First for us though, was to go through special Galapagos screening of our baggage, pay USD10 each to leave the mainland and then queue up to check-in, at a row of unmanned check-in desks. I had tried to check-in online the night before, but the airline we were flying with, Aerogal the airline of the Galapagos, denied it had any flights to the Galapagos on the day we were due to travel.

Finally, the check-in clerks showed up and the queues for the flights slowly reduced. When we got to check-in we were told that our guide had already checked us in. As far as we knew, we had no guide & felt sure there was something wrong. But sure enough, the Odyssey representative had already checked us in and 5 minutes later he turned up with our boarding passes.

But there was a problem. Felicity, who usually needs a litre of coffee to get going in the morning had had no coffee so far. So immediately after we got through security, she headed for the coffee shop and a fix. We had a quick fix, after which another double espresso was required and she purchased that just as we were called to board the plane. I went through and then waited for her. She was not happy, the guy at the gate had told her she couldn't go through with a coffee so she dumped the cup on his desk and stormed through.

As a kind of recompense, we had a great view of the snow capped Cotopaxi volcano which is at the southerly end of the airport in the distance, as we walked on the tarmac to the aircraft. We climbed on board this very old Boeing 737-200 series (they are now up to the 900 series) and taxied out on time, but in the 15 minutes or so since we saw it, Cotopaxi was shrouded in cloud.

The take off from Quito was pretty spectacular as we took off to the North and then turned right to headed south-west offering a great view of the City and the hills around. We flew for around 40 minutes, in which time Felicity managed to get a bit of a coffee fix, before we arrived at Guayaquil., the country's largest City. We stayed on the ground for a further 45 minutes taking on passengers, fuel and baggage, before we headed out for our ultimate destination - the Galapagos Islands.

Places we have visited and can recommend

Hotels
Folklore Hotel: Cheap but with all you need and within walking distance or USD2 taxi ride to the new town
Filatelia Apart Hotel: Cheap Suites and Rooms, if you need a big place to stay for a few nights. It is a bit tatty and the included breakfast is not very good, but the staff are helpful and it is only a few minutes walk of Amazonas (the main street in the new town).

Trips
Otavalo Market - Saturdays or Tuesdays

Restaurants/Cafes
Shenandoa Pie Shop, Poncho Plaza, Otavalo - for sweet fruit pies (such as Lemon Merigue and strawberry)

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