Ecuador: Quito, Cotopaxi and the equator

---

I arrived in Ecuador, much to my suprise, in Guayaquil. For some reason my plane had been diverted. Luckily, with my brilliant spanish, I found out they had organised a connecting flight, so I would make it to Quito after all, just 6 hours later than anticipated.

I stayed at the Secret Garden Hostel, where Christina, whom I had met in Rio, was volunteering for a month. She was planning to go to Cotopaxi, just 1 1/2 hours from Quito, the next day, so I decided to join her. So after seeing the historic center Quito, the next day we headed for Cotopaxi. This involved taking a local bus to the small town of Machachi, which cost a grand total of 75c. From there we had to take a taxi to the hostel, which was located somewhere on a farm in the countryside. After about 25 mins, the taxi, following the signs, turned into a dirt road. After getting stuck once, it was starting to get dark, and the road started to get worse. At this point the driver refused to go further, so all we could do was walk, hoping that we were on the right track...

In the end we made it to the hostel in one piece. Basically it is a farmhouse with a dormitory, with spectacular views of Cotopaxi volcano. After having a great meal, we sat around the fireplace, chatted with the people running the place, sitting around the fireplace.

The next day we went horseriding for a couple of hours. The horses didn't seem to enthusiatic about this though. My horse wouldn't go any faster than a slow walk, and Christina's horse refused to be steered, and repeadedly dragged her through the schrubbery.. When we returned to the hostel in the afternoon, we switched horses, and they behaved exactly the same. Only on the home stretch could they be persuaded to trot and gallop.

That afternoon two more guests arrived at the hostel, Emma and Andy. After a couple of drinks around the fireplace, we all retired early, in preperation of scaling Cotopaxi the next day. None of us had the ambition of making it up to the summit, which requires getting up at 1am and climbing for 8 hours at altidude. The easy alternative was driving to the carpark, at 4500m, and walking up to the snow line, at 5000m. 500m doesn't sound like much, but at that altitude the air is thin and going is tough. We were rewarded by spectacular views though, and had lunch up at the snowline.

Returning to Quito, I did what every tourist does - visit the equator. There is the offical equator, established by a frenchman around 1700, marked by a big monument. The true equator is 240 to the north, established by GPS, and has quite a cool museum. The museum has various exhibits about the indigenous people, including a real shrunken head. They also have pretty cool experiments, which I slightly dubious about at first. We all know water drains in opposite directions in the two hemispheres, but could the effect be seen so close to the equator? First we drained a basin just a meter north of the equator, and the water drained anti-clockwise. Lo and behold, when moving the basin exactly onto the equator, it drained vertically, without a funnel. And again one meter south of the equator, the water drained in ac clockwise fashion.

And so my short time in Ecuador came to an end. It was time to make my way to Columbia, the country all other South America travelers rated consistently as the best country to visit on the continent. Bogota was just a short 28 hour bus ride north....

---