Finding a hostel in Mariscal square was quite an easy task and first impressions of this part of Quito are very good. Hostel Nassau ($14 per double with baño privado and aqua caliente) is just 100m from restaurants and bars but distant enough to have quiet sleep at night. Even better the Spanish school is just round the corner and we are ready to absorb some of this nice language over next five days (20 hours in total). Private teacher Blanca did everything she could with our limited capability to learn and we both finish each day with serious headaches. Luckily local bars and cafes have enough variety of booze to dilute the pain. Quito is located very close to the equator and on Wednesday we catch a local bus after classes and spend whole afternoon walking between North and South hemispheres. What a fun! Thursday we check out historical centre of Quito and on Friday we are invited to Andrea´s parrents house for a dinner. We had a lot of fun to talk in Czech, English and Spanish with parrents Pablo and Monika, and twin doughters Andrea and Michelle. Saturday morning we get on bus again to be in Riobamba before evening so we can buy tickets for the famous train ride Nariz del Diablo, the most difficult train treck in the world. And soon we know why. Not only we are allowed to sit on the roof of cargo carriage but the train goes through the most difficult and immaginable terrain. In the last part of six hours ride the track drops about 1500m in a zig-zag fassion right in front of our eyes. It is really difficult not to look down and feel slight sickness in stomach. Our exitement is rised to the boiling point when few carriages de-rail on a wooden bridge. Some people think this is a part of the plot but soon we realise this is real stuff and we all jump off the roof to ground. Just in case!!! There is a few hundred meters straigt down. It took about half an hour to get wheels back on rails and we are moving again to return to Alausi station in mid afternoon. Some 20 minutes later we are on the way to Cuenca where we stay overnight and on Monday we continue to Loja. We want to see mountains on the next day´s bus trip so we sleep in a noisy hostel just next to the terminal. Tuesday 7am we leave Loja for Ecuador-Peruvian border via an infrequently used but very scenic route through Andies to Macara. Border formalities were simple and did not take more then half an hour. At 3pm we arrive to Piura and we decide to skip good bed sleep tonight again. Instead we buy an overnight tickets to Chimbote which will be our entry point to Cordillera Blanca.
