Quito: 29 September - 3 October.

Buses in Ecuador are great (did I really just say that buses are great?!?). There must be about a million of them that leave to anywhere you want to go every ten minutes. They are cheaper than chips as well, costing less than US$1 per hour on average. They don't have the luxuries that the long distance buses in Peru had, but then Ecuador is a smaller country so you don't have to travel so far. You simply rock up at the bus station, tell the nearest person where you want to go (they all work for one company or another) and they'll guide you to a bus that leaves in 5 minutes time. Easy.

It was about four hours from Banos to Quito, Ecuador's capital and at 2850m, the 2nd highest capital city in the world after La Paz, Bolivia. The bus journey for two was cheaper than the two minute taxi ride fare from Quito bus station to the middle of town (odd how that happens). We checked into our hotel, went out for dinner and got back just before the heavens opened for what would become the daily early evening thunderstorm while we were there (we did get soaked to the skin once!).

Another UNESCO World Heritage site, the old town is a lovely place. Filled with lots of nice architecture, churches and plazas, you can easily fill a couple of days just wandering around. The main square, Plaza Grande, is home to the Cathedral and the Presidential Palace and was constantly filled with people regardless of the time of day, or day of the week. On our first visit there, someone was giving autographs outside the Cathedral and the President (we assume) with entourage, made a brief foray onto the balcony of the Palace to the delight of the crowds. The Presidential Palace is open for tours daily, so we joined the queue and presently were being shown around some of the formal rooms and courtyards within the impressive building. The tour was free (we even got a souvenir photo of us on the staircase thrown in), but was only in Spanish so we don't have many fascinating insights to share!

There are loads of churches in Quito's old town and we visited a couple besides the Cathedral; the La Compania de Jesus which is decked out almost entirely in gold paint and the Basilica which sits on a hill at one end of the old town. The Basilica started being built in 1892 and took 100 years to finish so is actually quite new, though you wouldn't know it to look at it as there are a few crumbles in places. For a couple of dollars you can climb up the towers for great views over the city. The higher you get, the less 'safe' it gets by standards at home, until you're climbing ladders to the highest points where there are no safety rails in the large open gaps of the sculpted walls. Quite a nervous experience for those of us that don't like heights! One quirky thing about the building is that in place of gargoyles it has birds and animals from the Galapagos Islands - we recognised quite a few of the various creatures springing out of the walls.

We went on a couple of day-trips from Quito while we were staying there. The first was to the Saturday market in Otavalo, a town in the hills some two hours north of Quito. It was a bit of a trek for a market, but it's apparently the biggest handicrafts market in Ecuador and maybe in the whole continent so was definitely worth a look. We spent a good couple of hours wandering around the stalls before making several considered tat-purchases! Carved wooden tortoise anyone??!

Our other day-trip was to the Equator, only 22km north of Quito, though an hour or so on hot public transport! The 'Mitad del Mundo' complex is based round a big monument that sits on the Equator (as calculated by scientists in 1736), but is otherwise a bit of a circus of souvenir stalls, rubbish restaurants (we had the official Worst Burgers in The World) and random exhibits such as Insects of the Amazon and a French and Spanish museum. Underwhelmed, we took a couple of snaps of the monument and went next door to the small, but fascinating, museum 'Solar Inty Nan', through which the Equator actually runs (as redrawn using more modern technology). A guide took us round the open-air museum and we performed all the usual equator-tricks such as water running straight down a plug-hole on the equator itself and in different directions on either side. It's funny how excited a group of people can get looking at water drain out of a bucket! We'd been looking forward to this for ages!!

As well as explaining the various measurements and practical experiments that show you're on the Equator, the guide also took us round the eclectic mix of exhibits depicting various parts of life in Ecuador. For us, the most interesting of which was about the Amazon region (which we have made plans to visit), including examples of the various beasties we might encounter there (uh oh) and, somewhat bizarrely, a step-by-step guide on how to shrink a human head and a couple of real-life examples. For those of you who are interested, you need to remove everything from inside the head (including the skull) before boiling it. Cunningly they don't tell you how long you should boil a head, or give away the secret herbal concoction in which it should be boiled. Otherwise we'd all be doing it!

Another interesting nugget: the reason why Ecuador is the country most associated with the equator is because it is the only mountainous country that sits on the equator; the height providing scientists with the most optimum place for the triangulation measurements to calculate the location of the equator (we lost the thread of that towards the end too - can you tell?!). Quito, literally means 'middle earth' (which was easier to remember!).

So after five nights in Quito we were ready to move on, the only question was where. Despite October being the wettest month in northern Colombia, we've organised flights from Quito to Cartagena for a couple of weeks of Caribbean sun (hopefully!), followed by a stop in Bogota on the way south to Leticia on the Columbia/Peru/Brazil border on the Amazon River. Good times!

So that's all from Ecuador, next update to come from somewhere in Colombia!

Hope you are all well,

Dan & Sue.