Machu Picchu and Quito

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Hi all!



Its already time for the next blog post. Time is flying by!Although we have managed to cram a lot in over the past few days,my favourite was seeing my family! They decided to holiday in Peru to meet us during our trip, and we were lucky enough to spend two days in Cusco with them before they headed home. (Hope you are enjoying being back at work guys!).We then made our way to aqua calientes by the vista dome train, and spent 3 days there,intending to see Machu Picchu on our middle day there. Unfortunately, we are visiting during rainy season, so when we woke up at 4.30 am to make a head start on the ruins, the heavy rain which had started the night before was continuing. However, lucky for us, the rain stopped by the time the bus had taken us to the site! We spent the day walking around, and racing the fog and low lying clouds to take photos, particularly the iconic one. We managed to just about get it with a glimpse of wayna Picchu in the background. After that, we spent our last day in Peru seeing the Sacred Valley-namely ollaytaytambo, pisac and chincero.The weather was beautifully sunny, and we had a great time.





The next day was quite possibly my least favorite moment, our flight to Quito. We had a 5am start and a stop over in Lima. As we started to descend, there was a lot of turbulence. Being prone to travel sickness, (and hate of flying), you can guess my relief when we were about to touch the ground (in my mind anyway), then suddenly the plane began to pull back up...back to the level we were flying at to begin with!There was then an announcement in Spanish, which translated to "too much turbulence to land, but will try again"( according to the friendly Argentinian guy sitting next to us", and 20 mins later, the second attempt to land. However, the same thing happened again! We were about to try a third time, but the pilot got news from Quito airport that it was closed as it was too unsafe to land, and we were diverted to Guayaquil. After an hr and half of waiting on the plane, there was an announcement that Quito had reopened, and half an hr later, we had landed safely at Quito airport,4 hrs later than expected.





We've been in Quito now for four days. On our first day,we walked around the old town. While we were walking down to it, through where we are staying "gringolandia", we noticed how our surrounding reminded us a bit of London..walking down "edgeware road" to (a tiny) "marble arch" and "Hyde park". The churches/ cathedrals in the old Town were beautiful!Very ornate!A nice day spent settling into a new country. The next day we went up the teleferico(a cable car), and had splendid views of Quito. I'm pretty sure we could see the whole city! Yesterday, we went to mitad Del mundo (the middle of the world), the location of the equatorial line! We went to the "city", which contains a monument noting the location of the equator(which is actually 240m south of the actual location!), and to a museum where the actual equator lies.We had lots of fun taking photos, watching water swirl down a plughole on different sides of the equator (its true!I took videos!) and trying to walk along the line with our eyes closed (and failing).

Today, our final tour commences..our tour of the Galapagos. We have a meeting later to meet our group, then tomorrow we fly to the islands. Hopefully our flights will be better this time!





Will update the blog at the end of the trip!

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