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Today was the day I had to say goodbye to my travel buddy, Amanda, as she was returning to Canada, and I was continuing my travels through South America. The prospect of travelling alone for a month had me a little scared, but part of travelling is conquering fears and seizing new opportunities...so I left my worries in Bogota and flew off to Ecuador. When I touched down in Quito, I got my luggage put it in my hostel and decided I should take the afternoon to explore this new city.
Quito is a city of magestic views, as it is spread across the Andean Valley. Therefore, I decided to spend my first day taking in some of these breathtaking views. However, Quito is 2850m above sea level, so climbing stairs and walking up hills definintely tired me out. My first climbing expedition was to Parque Itchimbia, which offered me a 360 degree view of the city. After, this I had lunch at Cafe Mosaico on the terrace, which offered another look at Quito. After a brief respite at the hostel due to rain, I went off to El Panecillo. However, this hill known as El Panecillo was a little
higher than I had expected, so I was more then happy when I met a fellow backpacker and we were offered a ride in the back of a passing truck up the mountain. At the top of the Panecillo is a huge statue of the ¨Virgen de Quito,¨ so I went inside and saw some beautiful stain glass windows before climbing up to get a better shots of the city. I must say the climb down and back to the hostel was a lot easier......
I had signed up for dinner, and I was really happy to meet some of my roommates there. It was quite a mixed group, with people from the US, Australia and South Africa. They were pretty friendly, and we made plans to go to the middle of the world the next day.
I know it sounds touristy and lame, but I couldn´t help bus to the ¨mitad del mundo¨(middle of the world), given that I was only 22Km away from the equator. So we went to the middle of the world, took some pictures and watched a film at the planetarium, before returning to Quito. Once back I tried a local soup called
locro de papa, which was good, except it had dried blood in it, so it was a little weird to eat, but I think it probably made the soup tastier😉 After all the energy I had gained from the soup, I went to the Basillica de Voto National, where climbed over a wood plank and up three ladders to get to the gothic towers and see yet another amazing view of Quito!
I must say that after all this walking, I was really looking forward to taking the bus to Banos to relax in the Hot Springs. Therefore, after a nice dinner in ¨La Ronda,¨ a cobblestone street in Old Town, I went to sleep early in order to catch 7 o´clock bus the next day.
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