Beunos Dias Quito !

We arrived in Quito on Monday night after two short flights from Chicago via Miami (which looked quite exciting from the plane). We were very glad to first of all have been offered an airport pick up service from our hostel, and second to see that the guy had actually arrived, as it was dark when we arrived, and there was the familiar horde of taxi drivers coming up to us offering their services. Our hostel is in the not-attractive-at-all New Town part of Quito, but it a lovely old house with wooden floors and loads of character.

However, after spending two weeks in Lindy's Luxurious Lodge, complete with 3 good meals a day, laundry and internet services, as well as cable TV, this place is a bumpy return to traveller's reality with a mouldy room and concrete floor mattress wannabe bed. At least food here has returned to 'normal', with bread (without bean surprises inside), soup, chicken and rice featuring regularly on menu's, and no noodles in sight (big smiles).

Today we visited the Old Town of Quito, which is lovely; old colonial buildings and grand cathedrals all crammed into a valley (and sprawling up the sides) surrounded by green mountains, rolling cobbled streets filled with old ladies in ponchos and panama hats, old men with crinkled faces, police men whistling and directing traffic, buses and all sorts of ecuadorians.

We had ice-cream at Quito's 'oldest ice-cream parlour' in a gorgeous little shop, before hiking it uphill to Cafe Mosaic for coffee with a view of the sprawling Old Town, soaking up our first bit of Ecuadorian atmosphere, which feels fantastic... albeit a bit thin; the altitude of 2850m really took its toll on us and we were a wheezing mess by the time we got there!