After greeting the girls at 2am we decided to have a quiet-ish day around Quito, starting with breakfast in the central market with the locals. If nothing else we realised that café leche is really weak, milky, sugary coffee, just as Nathan likes it (as you can't taste any coffee). We caught a taxi to the TelefériQo (cable car) for some impressive views of the city, although we were slightly underprepared for the wind and cold in our flip flops and t-shirts whilst the locals were fully wrapped up with hats and gloves (we looked like typical English- 'this is warm for us!'). You can go on a 2 hour hike from the top but we opted out this time, partly due to our inappropriate attire.
We caught a taxi back to the old town and saw the Basilica church and Paisadilka ? statue.
For the afternoon we decided to go to the Botanical Gardens, a short bus ride away. Unfortunately the actual gardens were tiny and didn't look that impressive so we didn't pay to go in but ate lunch in the park surrounding it which was nice. Instead we went on some pedal boats which we thought would be nice and relaxing.. they turned out to be quite hard work and our boat appeared to be 'broken' (/ questionable driving) and we spent a while going round in circles. Eddy also managed to rip her jeans in an unfortunate place getting on to the boat, so has said goodbye to them after 1 day of wear. It was a nice afternoon anyway, and after almost losing the girls as they didn't get on the bus in time before the doors closed, we relaxed at the hostel before heading out for dinner to Fried Bananas which didn't disappoint- we all had a lovely meal which was well needed. After some strawberry mojitos (it's always happy hour in Quito) we went back and packed ready to leave at 5am to fly to Galapagos!!!