We arrived in Quito, the capital, on Saturday afternoon. After 3 hours of listen to the bus assistant shout "Quito, Quito, Quitoooo" at just about every person standing on the road between Otavalo and Quito, we'd had enough of public transport for one day. We jumped a taxi to the "new town", found our hostel, checked in, dropped our bags and headed straight to the bar. It was "beer o'clock".
We hooked up with two guys we'd met on the bus from Popayan, Woodsy (Brit) and Ian (Ozzie). We headed out in the "new town", which was packed with Quitorians, all dressed up and looking sharp (and there was us in our jeans and hiking shoes). We checked out a few of the local discotheques, Bunglow6, Dobre Bar and Blue Bar. Needless to say, Saturday night turned into quite a large night. Nothing was acheived on Sunday.
Monday we woke up fresh and ready to tick a few sights off the list. After a heathly breakfast we headed for the Teleferico. It's a 2.5km chairlift that takes you up to 4100m above Quito (which is around 2800m), offering amazing views over the city. From there, we walked along the ridge line of the Pichincha Volcano to 4600m, not quite the top, with clouds preventing us from summitting (again....), but it was good training nevertheless. After the climb we found a little almuerzo (lunch in spanish) place in the "old town", the lunch is pretty standard, it's a soup, then chicken with rice and a juice, all for a couple of dollars. We had a walk thru the old town, with some grand colonial buildings and plenty of churchs (also, pretty standard). Dinner at the Hostel and into bed early.
On Tuesday morning, we dropped into one of the mountain tour guides and I booked my 2 day Cotopaxi summit climb for Wednesday/Thursday. The rest of the day was filled with nervous anticipation. Mid morning we jumped on a collectivo bus and headed for the Mitad del Mundo - the Equator. (FYI - Ecuador is spanish for Equator, an interesting fact I thought). Now, the official Mitad del Mundo site is in fact not on the real Equator (which is classic south american stuff....). So, there's another Equator site about 200m further down the road, at the actual GPS 00'00'00" location. The locals have built this quirky outdoor museum on the site with heaps of facts and tricks of the Equator (I balanced an Egg on a nail, and got a certificate!), which was much more interesting than the crappy touristo park built on the wrong site.
After all the fun at the equator, we grabbed our gear from the hostel and headed for Cotopaxi national park. And yes, there's another bus story, which included a 1.5hr cross town metro bus to the "south terminal", then we got sold a ticket for a bus that didn't exist, after plenty of shouting, we got it sorted. Then the bus ride was more stops, more chickens and more chaos but we got there. Classic stuff.
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