Leaving Popayan, we embarked on a two-day journey to Ecuador with a one-night stopover in a small town at the border. We'd been warned that night travel is not the best idea over here and thought we'd take it on board to avoid being robbed... The bus trips were not all that bad, but we've now learnt that however many hours they tell you the trip will be... add another 3-4 hours and you'll get a little more accuracy.

After crossing the border on our second day with no real delays (thank God!), we made it to the nearest town to find our next bus but first needed to use a bathroom and get some food. The lovely gentleman let us know we had twenty minutes before the bus would depart and directed us to the bathroom as they loaded our bags onto the bus. As we came out of the bathroom we noticed something was amiss... "Donde esta el bus?" (Where is the bus?). Our driver got sick of waiting and drove off without us and with our bags. Luckily there was a guy there who knew we were meant to be on the bus and herded us towards where the bus was sat waiting, 500m away! He copped a little verbal abuse from what little Spangllsh we know about it no ttaking us twenty minutes to use the bathroom and what was their problem... he didn't care.

Anyway we were on board (checked our luggage was still there too) and on our way to Quito. Fifteen minutes down the road though, a loud bang sounded out the left side of the bus. I say, "I think we've blown a tyre". Kate says, "@#$% = Oh gosh darn it, no we haven't!". We pulled over a minute later and were left standing on the side of the road, hoping another bus was coming for us and ofcourse, no communication from our lovely bus driver and his sidekick. Sure enough, a bus came along and half a day later we drove into Quito ready to have a shower and get some sleep. We weren't quite expecting Quito to be as big as it is and had absolutely no sense of direction or idea of when we had to get off the bus and no one on board seemed to understand what "Old Town" was and where it is! We figured it out though and finally found our hostel and got that much needed and deserved sleep!

The next morning we enjoyed a great, and cheap, breakfast at our hostel up on its fifth floor balcony which overlooked the city and the surrounding mountains. Heading out into the city for a day of sightseeing, we started with a huge Basillica that had access to its belltower up an extremely steep and rickety staircase that was dauntingly high. Up top the views were beautiful looking down over the Old Town.

Lunch was next sitting in the main plaza surrounded by beautiful buildings and just taking in the city's atmosphere. Looking for a bit of culture we next checked out an art exhibition. I myself would not call taking someone else's sketches and colouring it in and adding a skull in the background art, but each to their own I guess. Kate on the otherhand, a little more accepting to art, told me to shut up and enjoy it. It was interesting... I guess.

The Old Town was filled with plaza's (squares) that were buzzing with culture. Whether it was art displays, live performances or the architecture or "feel" of the place, it was great just walking around. Ending off the day we caught a taxi up a hill for a great view of the city. Up top there was also a giant statue of the Virgin which we climbed up as well, which offered a little history on the statue and the city... in Spanish.

The next day we had a little sleep in and then ventured into "New Town". There was a lot less culture in here and more people in business suits walking around in a rush like Sydney's CBD. Although we did find some great markets in a huge park, kind of like New York's Central Park. We wandered around here for a while and headed to the side of a volcano... yes, another volcano!

This volcano was a little different though as instead of having to walk to the top, we jumped onboard a cable car called the TeleferiQo. It is a 2.5km ride up and dropped us off at 4100m in altitude! Little need to say, we felt a little dizzy up here and altitude sickness came to say hello. Ignoring this though we found that the views we found the day before were nothing compared to what we saw up here! It turns out the city was almost 60km in length sprawling around the bottom of the mountains and volcanoes and strecthed out to the horizon.

Calling it a day, we headed back to the hostel and had an early night. Although we had an interesting start to Ecuador, we were really happy with what Quito had to offer and could definately stayed longer if we had the time to spare.