In Mancora, Peru, we booked our coach ticket about 5 days in advance to make sure we could get a direct coach to Quito and not the more usual route through Guayaquil in Ecuador and then getting a connection to Quito. Luckily though, I went back into the office 2 days before to check on our seat allocation and make sure everything was tickety boo and guess what, they had actually cancelled the coach for that day and the next one was 3 days after the original date. So in the end we had to go via Guayaquil, brilliant!! The journey was through an apparently dodgy border crossing where we had heard loads of stories of people being ripped off by taxi drivers and also being palmed off with false money. The thing we had in our favour was that we were going by coach and not by ourselves, so no need for taxis to get from one border to another. We still had to be on our guard though as we were told by the guy on the coach not to give our documents to anybody as people come up to you and say they are officials who can get you through the customs procedures much quicker, but they always scam you one way or another. Well, the Peru border crossing wasn't so bad and the only problem with the Ecuador crossing was they had you queuing outside in 40C for about an hour, I think they did it just for fun. After about 9 hours we were at Guayaquil where we made our way to the main bus station where we were besiged by touts for bus companies destined for Quito. We backed off pretty sharpish as we didn`t want to be scammed onto a dodgy coach. But in the end we didn`t really know what each bus comapny was offering so we just went with the one with the friendliest banter and we were off. He did tell us the seats were fully reclinable, yeah course they were, they reclined about an inch, but it wasn`t too bad as the coach was half empty. We got to Quito really early in the morning (about 5am), after another 9 hour journey and found the hostal we had pre booked and just fell into bed. Quito is supposedly a dangerous city, all the travel books tell you to get a taxi at night, wherever you are going, and to watch yourself in most areas, even in the daytime. We just followed the rules and we didn't have any problems at all and quite liked Quito. Its amazing though that you still meet people who try to make out that everybody has got it wrong and that they walked around at night with no problems and didn`t see what the fuss was about. We had met a few people on the way up like that but one in particular was on the coach journey from Mancora to Guayaquil. I had already had him clocked when he told me he had been to S America before when his high school came across on a Rugby tour, yea, I remember my school doing that, NOT!! We got to play football with the other local school teams in Wolverhampton who, instead of going for the football in most tackles, had great pleasure kicking my b******s into the back of the net. So here he is, Mr 19 year old, I know everything, telling Donna and I that Quito is really nice, no need to catch taxi`s everywhere, and how he walked everywhere at night. I don`t know why these people are like this, I imagine if all the travel books and the hostals are telling you to watch yourselves there must be some truth in it. Maybe, they think it looks big, fortunately Donna and I didn`t swoon at his feet evertime he spoke, actually, after a while a big w***er sign lit up above his head. Quito, is split into 2 cities, the old city, and the new city, where all the hotels and tourist areas are. We had a lot to do here so most of the first 5 days were spent on the Internet and telephone, arranging things for our return back home, which was getting nearer by the day. Its at this point I decided that Estate Agents are scum of the earth (they actually took over first place of people I most hate, which was originally held by the Taxman). I won't go into details but we paid them humungous amounts of money to.....well, to do f*** all by the looks of it. If ever I would enjoy sticking a red hot poker up someones asre, it would have to be an estate agent, and I would keep in there for a very long time, well thats wrong, I would take it out now and again, but only to reheat and reinsert. Anyway, after about 5 days of getting things sorted we went exploring, first it was to the Mitad del Mundo (middle of the world) to see the equator line, which is just north of Quito. Here there was a very impressive monument on the line itself with a museum. We had our photo`s taken and then went to a presentation where we were told that it wasn`t really the equator, that was 200mts up the road, apparently the French got it wrong 400 years ago, as their instruments weren`t that accurate. Well, can you really trust the French, a nation that eats frogs legs and smell of garlic. So, off we trotted to the real Equator line and had a tour which involved the water going down the plughole (yes, it does work, its not an urban myth) and various other experiments that we could join in with, a great place to spend a few hours. We also went to the Old City in Quito, which has fabulous old buildings, with some really beautiful churches. Then the rest of the time we spent arranging our Galapagos trip and our Jungle tour in Brazil. There are some really brilliant places around Quito, which we didn`t get to see, moneys tight now and we have to make sacrifices, so maybe next time. Whilst we were here a volcano started to erupt at a place called Banos. This was in all the news in Ecuador. But the most interesting statistic was that while all the Ecuadoreans were flooding out the city, all the tourists were flooding in, obviously to get a good view of the eruptions and lava. Donna and I decided to stay put, Ecuador is supposed to be dangerous enough without standing under an active volcano spewing its guts out. The digs were OK, but it was French owned, remember you can`t trust the French, and after about 5 days of being moved everyday to a new room we decided to move to another hostel. The new one was great, really friendly, happy, smiley people who couldn`t do enough for you. The nightlife in Quito was good too, there are a lot of pubs, resturants and bars, in the one area and they actually call the place `Gringo City`. So now we were eargerly awaiting our trip to Galapagos, lets hope it stands up to the expectations!!