Quito

Ever since reading my mate shifty's blog and his experience I was not excited about visiting Quito. More recently I'd heard several stories of other peoples bad experiences in Quito. Still I had to experience it for myself !!

The flight to Quito and taxi ride to my hostel in the old town were drama free. I was staying at the Secret Garden hostel which is one of the main hostels on the lonely planet tour. The first night was a little strange getting used to being a backpacker again. In Medellin I had become accustomed to having my own room and being a novelty englishman... and now i was sharing a hostel with a large number of brits and staying in an 8-bed dorm surrounded by randoms. After the first night i soon got back into the swing of backpacking life - locking everything away, getting woken up at random times of the night, as well as trying to find the best shower in the hostel which had the slightest hint of warm water (and then not telling anyone else!).

The first day i shunned the city and headed out with a lady from my dorm to Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World). The lady I went with was a sprightly 60+ year old ozzie woman who told me her son was really worried about her backpacking around south america on her own. "No shit!" I thought to myself, while contemplating the thought of my own Mum doing the same! Good for her though. She was a fun woman and kept me amused all day. She constantly assumed everyone spoke english and didn't even attempting the basics like a simple "Gracias"! The cherry on the top was the bows (with her palms together) that she would give to the locals while saying in english "nice to meet you". Welcome to the south american gringo trail!!

Mitad del Mundo is on the equator just over an hour bus ride north from Quito. There is a big park where you can go and view lots of exhibits about the science experiments to find that ecuator line as well as general ecuadorian history. There is a huge red line etched in the earth to mark the equator. What made me chuckle is that there is absolutely nothing to tell you that the french actually calculated this equator line incorrectly and its actually 250m up the road! There is a much smaller (and better !!) museum on the actual equator (as calculated by GPS) up the road down a random dirt track road. There we had a tour and did experiments on the equator such as balancing an egg on a nail head (much easier to do on the equator apparently but i still failed but i reckon the egg was dodgy!), emptying a bowl of water into a bucket and seeing the water drain anti-clockwise north of the equator, clockwise south of the equator, and just drains straight on the equator.

During my other days in Quito I wandered both the old town and the new town. The old town has a huge basilica where i climbed the towers and at the top there is a great view of the city. However the route up there is a scary mix of stairs, wooden rope bridges and ladders which probably would have broken every safety regulation in the UK!! The new town really wasn't exciting for me. There is an area in the new town named 'gringolandia' by the locals which is a few streets of overpriced restaurants, bars and hostels drowned with gringos.. other than that some well known hotels etc.

Quito is one of the main hubs for trips to the Galapagos islands. I put some effort into visiting tour agencies to see if I could get a fantastic last minute deal but even at last minute prices it was going to be very very expensive. Although it would have been amazing, I just couldn't justify spending a fortune on what would be a 1 week trip and so I decided to pass.

I had 4 nights in Quito but was in no mood to explore the nightlife. I'd had a lot of fun nights out during my last month in Medellin and therefore it was great just to have some downtime to read / catchup on emails etc. Also i just didn't feel comfortable in Quito. Every day I headed out with nothing other than about $10 and left everything else locked away in the hostel including my camera. Maybe I was being paranoid and overly cautious but i just didn't want a bad experience in the first few days of being on the road again. I therefore have no pictures of Quito at all.. the one on this post i stole from a website!

Everyone in the hostel had a story of someone who had got mugged or robbed. I got chatting to a guy in my dorm to find that he had got robbed the day before!! After 2 hours of arriving in Quito he had dropped his bag in the hostel and headed out with his day rucksack. Only 2 blocks from the hostel in the middle of the day some dude squirted something like mustard over his bag. Another group came upto him to help him take his rucksack off and clean it... only to then run off with it!! There were so many similar stories like this which seems to be a classic trick.

So after a few days in Quito i was happy to be ready to move on. I had heard good things from several people about Baños, a small town 4 hours south of Quito which I wanted to visit. Baños is near the base of the active Tungurahua Volcano. However, during my time in Quito I heard through the grapevine and on the bbc news reports that the volcano had decided to erupt the same week. It erupted on Friday and I was due to leave Quito on Sunday. Should i go.. should i go? After much deliberation and debating it with fellow backpackers i decided to go for it and jumped on the bus to Baños. The road had been closed earlier on in the week so I checked with the man who sold me the bus ticket to ensure the road was open... and it was. A good start.