So the beginning of the end...the last leg of our trip...it's scary how fast it has gone so far. Our entry point into Latin America, the fourth and final continent that we would be visting, was Quito - the second highest capital city in the world. Sara regretably looked up Ecuador on the FCO website and it isn't a pretty read, but this blog is evidence that we have managed to survive so far!

As you already probably know, we are doing an organised tour around South America. So we booked 2 nights in the old town of Quito before we met up with our group in the new town. We only had limited time in the old town, but we still managed to get a good feel for the colonial aspect of the city. The old town is best explored by wandering the cobble streets, breathlessly at times for Sara due to the 2800m altitude!

We started at the 16th century Plaza Grande, containing the Presidential Palace, Archbishop's Palace, Cathedral and the City Hall. This appears to be the focal point and it's not hard to see why given the religious and political connections here. After that we then proceded to mill around a few other Plaza's which are primarily dominated by a cathedral surrounded by a large square. Something a little more out of the ordinary was La Ronda street, which is an old alleyway where you can see local kids playing hoopla, hop-scotch and various other street games. To finish off the day we took a taxi to El Panecillo (known as the Virgin of Quito), which is a statue that dominates Quito's skyline and is a good point to view the city.

 The following day we visited the spectacular Basilica del Voto Nacional, which offers a different perspective of a view over Quito. Sara was not up to the challenge of climbing the spire after the effort of the many stairs to the tower, so not to turn a challenge down I had to speak the local lingo to get a picture for confirmation that I managed to climb the vertical stairs to the peak of the spire! The basilica was cool though as it is quite gothic and it doesn't have your usual gargoyles but instead  iguanas and galapagos turtles in their place. 

Later we took a local bus to Mitad Del Mundo, aka the middle of the earth. This is where the true equator lies and we witnessed this with the many entertaining experiments that prove this. There is the obvious clockwise/anticlockwise fall of water depending on what side of the famous line you stand. However the other experiments such as those that involved balancing an egg on a nail (which I successfully did!) and walking a straight line blind were just as fun and interesting.

So finally the time came where we got to meet up with our group. Of the twelve of us there are 4 Brits, 3 Germans, 2 Danish, 1 Aussie, 1 Dutch and of course not forgetting an Welshmen. After the awkward welcome meeting reminiscent of an alcoholic anonymous meeting (for the record I have never been to one of these classes...and if I told that wouldn't be very anonomous), we got down to socialising as the British know best -  via food and drink...I think we are going to have a lot of fun together as a group!

 
On our last day we decided to get our laundry done to have a full quota of clothes to go into the jungle. The perfect plan was to get it done away from our hotel (as it's cheaper) and then have it delivered by the time we returned from Teleferico - the main viewpoint over the city where you can also trek to a volcano. To cut a long story short, our laundry hadn't arrived upon our return, we were unable to contact to them and there was no prospect of retreiving it the next day either. Sara was panicking to say the very least but gladly (and as I anticipated) it turned up very late that evening. Irrelevant of this, as you can see from the photos the view from the peak is quite awesome (gladly we were able to get a cable car to the shivering altitude of over 4000m), however it was annoying that it was cloudy which blocked our view of the volcano.

It was then typical the following day on departing Quito there was not a cloud in the sky. Oh well on the plus side at least the onward travel required no organising from ourselves. For those avid blog readers, our duration in each place now is going to be considerably shorter due to being on an organised tour, so unfortunately the blogs will not be as extensive as you have previously read...i'm sure you are probably getting bored of them by now anyway!

Xx