Quito

That capital of Ecuador and the Andes! It’s also, the the second highest capital in the word.
We arrived here from the boarder crossing of nightmares, late, but we had booked in to a hostel called Masaya knowing we could get some sleep. Luckily, after getting to the Ecuador side of the boarder, we got he right buses to get us to Quito. The taxi ride across the city at 1am was rapid, the Nissan Bluebird did not sound healthy!
We woke up late the next day to find that Malvin, after going back for his hard drive, was in the same dorm as us and had got there 12 hours before us. Ha!
We went out for some lunch and made a Vaughn plan. That afternoon we’d go and do the standard walking tour of the city.
Quito is a really interesting place, it’s main reason for being is that it’s the highest point on the equator, thus making the closest point habitable to space. The early settlers here fast became the best astronomers on the continent and learnt much about how the seasons work, this leading to many visits by the French to ‘discover’ the same things, a few hundred years later.
The walking tour taught us about how many presidents Ecuador have been through and assassinated, the financial troubles and how they are now stuck with the US dollar. Also, how Cacao used to be their main export until they found oil near the Amazon. We saw many of the churches here, one absolutely dripping in gold leaf, and ended up in the famous old alley, which was right behind our hostel.
Later that night, there was some live music in the hostel, which was great to hear, but headed to bed earlyish ready to go see the Otavalo market the next day.
The market is the biggest of its kind in South America, apparently, and it’s more of a craft market. It seemed to be full of stuff made in Mexico and Alpaca closes, which were not fully alpaca, but all looked nice. Malvin bought a shirt, but nothing bought by me or Kirsty. It was good to see, but not the most impressive market of Latin America so far.
The next day Malvin was heading off somewhere and we we planning to get a late bus to Latacunga to climb Cotopaxi, so we decided to have a big night out. Malvin got his phone stolen, he got it back for $5, very lucky; and we ended up in an illegal bar in a block of flats. Win!
Waking up, we had a full day and I really wanted to go to the equator park, which is north of Quito, and took ages to get there in a taxi. It was worth going, even though it’s in slightly the wrong place, we bounced around for a couple of hours, then headed back to Quito. Jumped on the bus and headed to the next adventure!Read more