Rio Amazonas Hotel Quito

Quito It's all true! Water flows vertically down the drain without swirling when you stand on the equator. We witnessed this truth at the greatest little museum in Quito which sits exactly on the line. A portable sink is used to explain this phenomenon, and by moving it to the north of the equator, we watch the water flow and swirl counter clockwise. When we step away to the south, the draining water swirls clockwise. Apart for the fact that once again, we were high up in the clouds and the b...

October 7th 2007 - Day 118 After yesterdays taste of sunshine it was back to being miserable and overcast - boo! We were up bright and early with the sound of a Bob Dylan wannabe strumming some awful rifts in the hotel lobby so we headed out to grab and drink and some brekkie before starting off to the bus station. The bus ride was a short one for a change so we were in Latacunga nice and early. We checked into the Amazonia Hotel which was a real bargain at $6 a night although we were to find...

Quito was such a pleasant surprise after Santiago. It is a safe, colourful and vibrant city tucked into the Andes at 2,850m above sea level. The New Town is full of quirky restaurants and cafes, while the Old Town contains some incredible cathedrals and historical buildings. We visited the Old Town on Good Friday, only to be swamped by thousands of people marching through the old cobblestone streets in a religious procession that bordered on fanatical. Men nailed to crosses walked beside a th...

"Loora es la **** eh" Sounds like a rude way to be woken up by a flight purser but in this case the poor dutch man wanted to say "la hora es la siette" (it´s 7 o´clock). It´s always comforting to know that no matter how bad you are at speaking a language there is always someone who´se even worse. We had continued the flight from Bona ire and where now landing in Guayaquil, already in Ecuador but not the city between the volcano's that was going to be my starting point. I´m flying economy clas...

Make sure to check out Andrea's Travel Blog for more stories and photos of our trip! Ecuador = Equator If you haven't noticed the odd similarity in the two words of the title of this entry, Ecuador, is smack dab on the equator. A bus ride 11/2 hours north of Quito gets you to Mitad del Mundo, literally, the middle of the world. They've setup a theme park on the "supposed' equator which is both extremely cheesy and also incorrectly positioned. It turns out that the big red line showing the mid...

Arrived at high altitude for the first time on this trip! Arrived in Quito yesterday at 2850m, and it really is noticeable. My contact lense solution squirted out like an oil strike when I opened the bottle because the air lacks so much pressure. Noticeably harder to climb stairs, and reading out loud I can`t get to the end of sentences without pausing for breath!

Arrive back in Quito after an 11 hour ride after being stitched up by a Spanish couple- paying the price for not speaking Spanish!

We arrived in Quito at 1am last night to be greeted by a note saying we had to be up at 5:30am for the flight to galapagos in the morning! Bizarrely the hotel room had three double beds, but it was very nice. We write this from a mystery place, our flight to galapagos has stopped somewhere (no idea) and is about to get going again for the final bit of the journey - very excited about getting to the galapagos! NEWS FLASH - danielle officially has the smelliest feet and boots in south America!

We only had one day to explore Quito and it turned out to be a National Holiday so a lot of places were shut. We started the day by visiting the ´Virgin of Quito´ a large statue overlooking the city. We were able to climb part way up and the views were amazing. We could see the snowy peak of Cotopaxi mountain behind us and the whole of the city in front of us, including the Cathedral.

After this we headed to the main square, most of the roads were shut and the locals were waving flags,...