Ecuador
Am in Ecuador. Quito to be precise. Have been here for a couple of days now.
Day 0 was effectively spend on aeroplanes... London to Madrid, where where giggled at the asian tourists with surgical masks. Then when we arrived in Spain, everyone working there was wearing masks. Leaving Madrid, our flight had about 15% of the passengers wearing them. 18 hours later in enclosed space with people who think its necessary to wear surgical masks, we landed in South America, where we transferred for the final 45 minute flight to Quito.
Day 1 - Cleared customs without too much hassle, apart from a lovely new tear in my backpack where it had caught on some machinery somewhere, and were met by Eduardo, our driver who took us to the hotel.
Had a shower, and grabbed a map, and walked into town. Managed to get sunburnt on the back of the neck within about 20 minutes :-)
We found somewhere to eat lunch, and completely failing to speak any spanish, we were resuced by a couple of other english backpackers who helped us order. Then walked back home to the hotel, while dodging 4year old girls who were trying to sell us cigarettes.
Back in the hotel, we lay down for a bit before heading out to some bars... however, something went terribly wrong, and we ended up sleeping for many many hours, and waking up the next morning, having missed out on going to bars, or even having dinner. I blame jetlag and the sun.
Day 2 - Decided to try out the public transport system, and caught a couple of busses out of town. On the first one, I noticed the group next to us speaking Swiss-German - so struck up a conversation with them - they were headed to the same place we were - Mitad del Mundo - the Middle of the World. Bit of a monument place where the equator runs through. It had a nice big tower to climb, and some lines painted on the ground to take your photo on, and food and souvineer shops, but was actually a couple of hundred meters away from the equator, according to the GPS in my phone.
We went for a wander down the road with the GPS to find the real location, and found another museum thing much closer to the site, but without the impressive tower. We went in, and found they did a bit of a guided tour through their site - which turned out to be quite interesting. Plus he showed us the usual things with the water down the drains, and balancing an egg on top of a nail
Tonight, we're going to go find those bars we didn't make it to last night (will they be open on a sunday?) and tomorrow we're off to the Cotopaxi Volcano. Should be fun!
Day 0 was effectively spend on aeroplanes... London to Madrid, where where giggled at the asian tourists with surgical masks. Then when we arrived in Spain, everyone working there was wearing masks. Leaving Madrid, our flight had about 15% of the passengers wearing them. 18 hours later in enclosed space with people who think its necessary to wear surgical masks, we landed in South America, where we transferred for the final 45 minute flight to Quito.
Day 1 - Cleared customs without too much hassle, apart from a lovely new tear in my backpack where it had caught on some machinery somewhere, and were met by Eduardo, our driver who took us to the hotel.
Had a shower, and grabbed a map, and walked into town. Managed to get sunburnt on the back of the neck within about 20 minutes :-)
We found somewhere to eat lunch, and completely failing to speak any spanish, we were resuced by a couple of other english backpackers who helped us order. Then walked back home to the hotel, while dodging 4year old girls who were trying to sell us cigarettes.
Back in the hotel, we lay down for a bit before heading out to some bars... however, something went terribly wrong, and we ended up sleeping for many many hours, and waking up the next morning, having missed out on going to bars, or even having dinner. I blame jetlag and the sun.
Day 2 - Decided to try out the public transport system, and caught a couple of busses out of town. On the first one, I noticed the group next to us speaking Swiss-German - so struck up a conversation with them - they were headed to the same place we were - Mitad del Mundo - the Middle of the World. Bit of a monument place where the equator runs through. It had a nice big tower to climb, and some lines painted on the ground to take your photo on, and food and souvineer shops, but was actually a couple of hundred meters away from the equator, according to the GPS in my phone.
We went for a wander down the road with the GPS to find the real location, and found another museum thing much closer to the site, but without the impressive tower. We went in, and found they did a bit of a guided tour through their site - which turned out to be quite interesting. Plus he showed us the usual things with the water down the drains, and balancing an egg on top of a nail
Tonight, we're going to go find those bars we didn't make it to last night (will they be open on a sunday?) and tomorrow we're off to the Cotopaxi Volcano. Should be fun!