Quito

I arrived in Quito from Bogota by taking a plane to Pasto and then taking a bus to the boarder. What I had not realised was that the bus left me just at the boarder and had me cross it on foot. Oh dear...

It should not normally be a problem, but I arrived at the boarder at night, and everything always seems slightly more dodgey when the sun has gone down. Especially when you have all of your belongings on your back. There was no problem getting my passport stamped on the Colombian side (they were probably glad to get another gringo out of the country), but then there was about 100 metres of no man's land to have to cross with people trying to sell things, and they were the ones that scared me. I really could not imagine what I could have done if I had gotten mugged in no man's land, and someone stole my passport. How do you explain this to the immigration?

Thankfully none of this happened, and I eventually made it safely to the hostel in Quito that I had been recommended by several people. The reason it is so popular? They have free rum and coke nights on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. How could I miss out on such a fabulous offer? I am only human, after all. I arrived on a Monday night, just in time to take advantage of the rum, and started the downward spiral that would end up in what I thought was a terrible, unfixable mistake.

On tuesday, I went out and booked my flight for the Galapagos, which has been a dream since the beginning of the trip, so I was rather pleased with myself, but kept going and organised some Spanish lessons for 1 pound 50 and hour, and thought that if I kept doing things, there would be nothing else left to do for the rest of my time in Quito.

Skip to Thursday (morning after rum and coke), and a group of us decided to go to the basilica because it is possible to abseil down. For some reason it seemed like a great idea, and I went along with them despite my fear of heights and the fact that I have never abseiled in my life. The "guide" was not all that helpful either. I was looking for some last minute advice as he was telling me to climb over the edge, and all he could tell me was "hold on to the rope". Since there is nothing else to hold on to, I thought that it was pretty obvious and resented him for it, but once I got going, I realised that there really was not much else to tell me. It is a pretty simple process.

The mitad del mundo (centre of the world) is a museum just outside of the city where you basically just go and see the equator. At first it looks like nothing more than just a red line randomly painted on the ground, but there are a few experiments that they do to prove to you that you are actually at latitude 0.

Firstly, they show water draining, which was my favorite, because the water just goes straight down, rather than in a spiral. I had never seen such a thing. They them moved the same kitchen sink about a metre to the south side, and the water spun anti-clockwise. When they moved it a metre to the north side, the water drained clockwise. Fabulous.

The second experiment was to have us put our arms up and have the tour guide try and lower them. Being a woman of rather small stature, she failed rather dismally, but when we moved to the line, she managed to do it no problems with one had. Take that Damien's ego!

The final experiment consisted of trying to balance an egg on a nail head. This one sounded completely impossible to me, but when I saw the guide do it, it seriously brought my hopes up. It only took me a couple goes to get it, and frankly I could not believe it. They gave me a certificate, which looked really tacky, saying that I had in-fact balanced an egg on a nail head. No surprise that it was lost within hours of reception.

The rest of my time in Quito was just spent killing time between Spanish lessons before my flight on Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning... What a silly mistake I made when booking for that date. The rum and coke started flowing on Monday night, and I had to join in the festivities. The plan was to stay up all night, and catch my flight in the morning, but what happened was that when I got to the airport, I was really tired. How did that happen? Basically, I waited around, and by the time I stood up, someone told me the gate had already closed, and I could not get on the flight. This was one hell of a scary moment, because I thought that it was $400 out the window, but luckily flights to the Galapagos are very flexible, so I just changed it to the next available flight.

I have finally made it to the dream islands, and I will start a boat tour on Sunday. I can not wait.