We left Otavalo on Sunday morning for the short trip to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, accompanied by Tobi the Swiss guy we met in Otavalo. The weather was pretty grey and miserable when we arrived so we spent the day wandering around the city and climbed up into the Cathedral tower - another example of the difference in health and safety, you´d need to keep an eye on any children up there as it would be quite easy to walk off the edge. Quito´s old town has lots of nice squares and architecture and we wandered into a church which was extremely ornate with lots of gold and impressive artwork, it was the first church built by the Spanish in South America.

The following day we visited the town of Mital del Mundo (come on you can do the translation yourself) which sits on the Equator, you won´t be surprised to hear that we´d both been asleep when we crossed it on the way from Otavalo. It has a slightly wierd theme park type area with a monument telling you your´re at the centre of the earth, we actually read that it´s a bit off centre!

We spent the following day walking around the new town area and enjoyed a good Ecuadorian meal, the night before we´d had a terrible, and expensive meal, in the kind of gated touristy area. All in all Quito is a nice city to wander round in, unfortunately everyone you speak to and everything you read tells you it´s a very dangerous place to be after dark. We saw no evidence of this but not wanting to take any chances we were always back in our hotel by 9 o´clock each night which means we weren´t able to experience any night life unless we wanted to head into the westernised tourist area, which we didn´t. Othere than that Quito is a perfectly pleasant place to spend a few days.