Quito has been a great introduction to South America for us, being initially worried about things we´d heard about the city being dangerous we´ve found the people to be friendly, helpful, and at times even nervous around foreigners.
We love it here, there´s a lot of noise, people selling things, shoe shine boys, bus conductors hanging out of buses calling out destinations and buses stopping to pick people up wherever they want! Also people at work with sleeping children on their backs, and I even saw a boy sitting next to his father eating crisps-while his father was driving a bus! Possibly the most impressive thing here is that you can get freshly sqeezed juice anywhere, anytime - with our breakfast on day 1 we got melon juice and day 2 we had strawberry juice! So far I´ve tried papaya, blackberry, orange, melon, watermelon..... I don't think I´ll get bored of that in a hurry! Our hostel is in a great part of town too - as there´s lots going on and loads of bars, restaurants, clubs etc.
First day here we spent looking round and getting our bearings. we went for lunch and got a 3 course ´executive´ lunch for 2 dollars each. very nice!
On the second day we went to the ´middle of the world´. Our journey was our first on public transport and was interesting, an old lady helped us find the transport we needed and told us what to do. All the people seem to want you to have a nice time here. There was a TV on the bus with some weird programs and when we changed to the normal bus there was loud salsa music playing!! We spent about two hours in the museum and then went to another small museum next door who told us that in fact the memorial is in the wrong place! The scientists have been proved wrong by GPS! The middle of the world is 240m further up the mountain, and weirdly enough when they found the correct site they found a pre-Inca site there in exactly the right place- showing that 1000 years ago the people could measure better than 100 years ago! It was eye opening and fascinating.
When we got home we met the other people on our trip, there´re 16 of us - and went out for a meal together. Today we went on a proper siteseeing trip around the centre and then went for a lovely meal, for just 6 dollars with an australian guy called Rob.
This afternoon we´re resting up as in the morning we have an early start and off to the jungle.....
