Chicago Hostel & Pub Quito

Well, this is where it all started, what can I say but flights, flights and more flights... well three to be exact.. We headed off from Dublin on the 10th with a few hours kip in Paris before the next morning came and the next flight... Destination: Columbia. No where near as dodgy as you think it would be though! not that we actually left the grounds of the airport and they did insist on taking fingerprints when you change money! We got fairly acquainted with the inside of Bogota airport as ...

Jet-Lag and high altitude are not a great combination but people pay lots of cash to feel this out of it!! We met up with an English couple while having breakfast on the roof of the hostel overlooking the city, who were most of the way through their round the world trip. We spent the day just walking around the city taking in the sights and fumes from the billions of buses and taxis that would never pass an NCT! Had the best pizza and salad in SA Pizza, who would have thought apple and cheese...

We´re stuck in Quito until Wednesday (3 December) since we couldn´t get an earlier flight out to L.A. There are better places we could have been stuck in. Quito is crime central city and feels even worse than Rio. Tourists are advised not to walk in the dark (even one block!) or even in lonely places during the daytime. There is a festival going on at the moment making it a bit lively, otherwise it would be even gloomier than it already is. There is dog **** and other **** everywhere and is s...

Arrived in Quito at around 1230 pm after an overnight flight originating from SFO via LAX and Bogota. Getting out of the airport was unpleasant. The combination of exhaustion, hunger and the extreme altitude made me so sick that I almost passed out in the cab [Quito is the second highest capital city in the world, second only to neighboring La Paz, Bolivia. It's 9350ft above sea level]. A fellow traveler who I met in the plane was nice enough to share her cab with me and they dropped me off i...

Bienvenidos folks After stop-overs in London and Miami, Gian and I got safely to Quito last night - with our luggage. It's funny that the airport in Quito is more technologically advanced than Miami. Sucked in yankees. We went straight to our hostel, after about 18 hours flight, you can imagine that we were pretty fried and went to bed immediately. Our hostal is suprisingly clean and the breakfast is pretty good too. We went into town today and visited the basilica de Quito, a breathtaking Ch...

Hola Chicos y Chicas We had breakfast this morning at the swiss corner with Herbert. It was great. Herbert said that there's another family visiting him on 5 july. He's going down with them to Cotopaxi and some towns and asked us if we'd join in. We'll give him a call when we get back from Galapagos. After that we went onto a lookout above Quito (it's 4100m above sea level). We've been pretty lucky with the weather so far. The last 3 days were mostly sunny (except of the heavy rainshowers in ...

Porque Lat 000??...= Latitude 000. Si, nosotros visitamos el ecuador! Es moy facil, vamos en el autobus de metro a Mitad del Mundo. We visited the equator! It is very easy, we go by bus from the metro to the ¨Middle of the World¨ Claro, se nombre del pais Ecuador es porque el ecuador! Oh, I see, the name of the country Ecuador is because of the equator! Quito es una bonita ciudad, especialmente por la noche. Quito is a pretty city, especially at night time. Mi español no is moy bueno, pero is...

Having been on the go with various tours for the last few weeks, we were keen to settle down and use Quito as a base for the last few days of our travels. Quito has two distinct sections, the Historic Old Town with the city´s churches and old buildings and the New Town full of shops, cafes and bars. We managed to get a hotel just in the old town which meant we could walk easily to the center or take the tram to the New Town. Within hours of arriving, we had also experienced the incredibly sca...