Advertisement
Published: March 3rd 2007
Edit Blog Post
Quite predictably I was not awake for school today. However we managed to be reasonably on time (meaning that my teacher was even later so I could pretend I´d been there for ages!) Did the past tense finally - kind of need it to have a conversation - and then went out to a fruit market in order to ´practise my Spanish´. I got some interesting fruit anyway - basically bought anything I didn´t recognise and Carlos couldn´t translate! In all seriousness I did manage a conversation about the English school system and differences between countries. Actually just turned into me complaining about England!
Seems weird that I´ve already been here two weeks and very scary that all my Spanish lessons are over! Hopefully it will seriously improve with practise.
Had lunch then met up with Jack, Matt, Bel and Louisa at two to go up the mountain on the TeleferiQo, Quito´s newest tourist attraction in the form of a cable car that travels 2.5km up Volcan Pichincha to a height of 4100metres. Bit out of breath by the time we got up there but absolutely spectacular views over Quito. The complex itself was horrendous - like walking into
a theme park. It was full of arcades, souvenir shops and even a go-kart track. Turn your back on that and once you´re up the volcano it´s fine!
The walk to the actual peak (4670 metres) is described as three hours ´for fit hikers´so we decided to only go a little way as the altitude was making us out of breath as it was. We had the necessary photos posing a little to close to the edge of cliffs for comfort whilst Matt and Jack made up a theme song for us. Turned out very bizarre in the end.
I´m not a fan of heights at the best of times and the altitude and tiredness was making me go really weird so we decided to stop for a sugar fix and have drinks. It was surprisingly cold and I actually got to wear one of the fleeces I dragged all the way from England! I braved the hot chocolate (although I was seriously put off by the stuff yesterday - not sure if it was cheese it had in it but it certainly tasted weird!) This was much better, far more like the chocolate Ecuador is supposed to
be famous for!
Got back down the mountain in one piece with Louisa insisting on us waving at everyone in the passing cable cars. God knows what they thought of the crazy English people!
Got back down to the bottom only to find there were no taxis. Not a problem though as we hopped on a free bus despite not knowing where it went. Unfortunately it only went to the bottom of the hill which didn´t do us much good. Finally managed to get a taxi after ages spent standing at the edge of the road and made it home for a ´family´dinner as Silvie leaves for the jungle tomorrow.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.226s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 30; qc: 140; dbt: 0.1549s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
Anna
non-member comment
beautiful views
Hi Kat!! Absolutely gorgeous photos but are you telling me you couldn't get just a tiny bit closer to the edge for that photo? From what you've been saying the buses seem to take you right on the edge, I should have thought feet were safer!!! By the way are all the other people in your group really tall or have you just shrunk?!! Love Anna.