15/9/2010

I've had two days in Quito now. Didn't achieve much the first day, just wandered a bit from the hotel down into the city. Found it hard not speaking Spanish, even the hotel staff don't speak a lot of English, and I had to be careful to remember my way back as it would have been very hard to ask for directions! Started meeting people who are going to be on the trip in the late afternoon, there are about seven of us here now, two from England, four Australians and me. Our tour leader and driver turned up this afternoon too, so there's a big yellow truck parked outside waiting.

A few of us went down to the Old Town in Quito today. It's much nicer than the new part. To me the new part is old and dirty looking where as the Old Town has really nice buildings that are well looked after. There were lots of squares and cathedrals and fancy looking buildings, none of which I know the names of, but I have photos...A lot of the buildings had carved stone features and huge wooden doors, and inside the cathedrals were very ornate with lots and lots of gold. We visited the museum of the city which had interesting things to look at but all descriptions were, of course, in Spanish. Near the end of the day we went up to the Basilica and climbed up to the bell tower to look out over the city, awesome view.

For dinner we went to a roof top restaurant in the old town with live music. I ordered a cheese empanada which turned out to be absolutely HUGE! It was on the starters list but I guess you're meant to share it with the table, that's what I did anyway, it was too big to eat alone but very funny when they brought it out.

16/9/2010

Today has been good but exhausting! We started by taking a cable car up a volcano right near the city, which last erupted in 1999. We got up to about 4100 metres, the air was pretty thin and there was a freezing wind. The altitude made it quite hard to breath and took a bit of getting used to but good practice for the Inca Trails where we go even higher. The view was amazing over the whole of Quito, we could even see big planes flying below us coming into the airport looking tiny.

After taking the cable car back down we went to the Vivarium, reptile house, where we saw lots of different snakes, and a few other reptiles and amphibians,from all over Ecuador, including a big boa which we were allowed to touch. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos, there were some very cool snakes I would love to have pictures of, but wouldn't want to meet in the wild to get the opportunity!

Next up was an art museum full of work by an artist named Guayasamin. He had a wide range of styles, I think modelled a bit after different artists he studied. Up the road was a second museum in what used to be his house, which contained his collections of art, mainly pottery and religious works, by other artists and more of his own paintings.

Dinner was at a very funky restaurant which served a mixture of international foods. It was the atmosphere that was really cool. It was made up of a few rooms, one had cushions on the floor to lounge around on and fur all over the walls. To get to the part we were sitting in we had to climb through what first looked like a mirror on the wall but was actually a framed doorway.

We had our pre-departure meeting this evening and tomorrow morning we hop on the truck and head for Otavalo. Can't wait to get out of the city!