Despite leaving Peru in the early hours of the morning, we didn't arrive in Quito until late in the afternoon.We caught a taxi to our hostel, Casa Eliza, which was a converted house in Quito's New Town, and therefore pretty small and cosy.Too tired to really do much, we went for a leisurely wander around the New Town, and discovered the main street where all the bars, restaurants and clubs were.We stopped for dinner at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant, but to be honest that's about as exciting as it got all day!From where we were, Quito seemed to be pretty built up and commercial, with several branches of major chain hotels all nearby, long traffic filled main roads, and very little in the way of"culture".Luckily this changed somewhat over the next two days.The next day we caught a bus out to Mitad del Mundo, the small purpose built town 22km north of Quito, where the equatorruns through!It was a long bus ride, most of which was spent standing, but it was nonetheless an experience riding the bus with local Ecuadorians.When we arrived, you could see just how touristy the place was before we even entered the gates!Nonetheless, it was pretty fun standing on the equator line, hopping back and forth between hemispheres, and generally admiring the huge monument and few exhibitions that have been built on the site.Unfortunately all of the excitement at having stood on the equator was quelled less than 20 minutes later.We went down the road to visit a nearby museum, which we thought was going to be more about the equator, but ended up getting more than we had bargained for!!The guy in the museum explained to us that where the monument was, wasn't actually where the equator was!!!He was part of a team of five scientists, who using a combination of the techniques employed by the early civilizations, the winter and summer solstices and equinoxes, and good old GPRS, had proved that the actual equator line actually lay somewhere else!!He said that if we simply went on Google Earth and searched for 0 degrees latitude, we would see that the line didn't pass through Mitad del Mundo at all!We spent almost an hour and a half in the museum, while he showed us all of the evidence they had put together, explained what their research aims were, why the Ecuadorian government were reluctant to acknowledge or fund what they were doing, how Ecuador was not taking steps to preserve its history and traditions, and how the country was not taking advantage of the gains to be made from tourism.It was one of the most interesting and insightful moments of our trip, and we ended up buying the DVD, so when we get home we will be boring you all with facts and phenomena to do with the REAL equator!!!After our deep and meaningful talk, we caught a taxi up to Pululahua, a massive volcanic crater that has overtime been colonized by plants and now contains three small villages.The view was absolutely incredible, and the farming fields below looked like a patchwork quilt!!Everything was just so green and clouds were tumbling past our faces and into the crater because we were so high up!!The plan had been to hike the one and a half hours down into the base of the crater, but a few metres in we realized that it was just too steep and slippery, and settled for simply admiring the view from the top.We walked back down from the crater though, and all the way down we had spectacular views of Quito, which very much changed our first impressions from the day before.We could see that Quito was nestled into a valley and flanked by mountains covered in lush green forests, including several snow-capped volcanoes such as Pichincha.This was our first taster of just how green Ecuador is!!At the end of the day we caught a bus back to the New Town and headed off to Hassan's, a lebanese restaurant we had spotted on our walk the previous day.The food was DELICIOUS!We both helped ourselves to falafel, tabouleh and tzatziki and it was so tasty, that Marisha ended up having seconds!!The best thing of all was that it was only 99 cents a falafel!!!Fully stuffed, we headed back to our hostel for the evening, and packed our bags because we were moving to a posh hotel the next morning, where our final GAP tour was due to begin.This tour was to take us through the Galapagos Islands and then back to Peru for the ultimate trekking adventure, The Inca Trail!!The next morning we moved, and what a treat the Rio Amazonas Hotel was!!Having had a good few months of roughing it in some very questionable hostels, we were treated to a luxury room with a double bed each, hot showers, and cable tv!!To say we felt spoiled would be an understatement!!As our welcome briefing wasn't until later that afternoon, we decided to use the day to visit Quito's old town.We thought it would be good to walk, but it ended up being a very long walk, during which the only thing of interest we passed was a gothic style Basilica, however we were too tired to appreciate it!By the time we reached the main plaza, it had begun to rain pretty badly, and after snapping a few pictures of the cathedral, governor's palace, and various other colonial style municipal buildings, we decided that we just couldn't be bothered and headed back to the comfort of our nice hotel!!At our briefing we received details of what was to come in the next few days in the Galapagos Islands, and met the rest of our tour group who would be joining us on the boat.It was a good mix of Americans, Swedes, and Aussies, and we were later to find a French-Canadian and two more English on our boat to boot!Excited for the coming few days, we headed to our rooms to pack and had an early night since we were going to be up early the next morning.The next morning after a delicious buffet breakfast, we all hopped into a minibus for our transfer to the airport and awaited our flight to Baltra in the Galapagos Islands?