July 12-14 - Quito, Ecuador

At the equator

I flew from Cali to Quito on the evening of the 12th while still trying to recover from my last night out in Cali. When I arrived at the airport I had to wait for two hours for my two best friends, Sam and Stacy, to arrive from Calgary. I was so happy to see them when they arrived! We took a shuttle to the hostel that we had booked, meet the people in our dorm and went to bed.
The view from the hostel the next morning was spectacular. We were staying in the old part of the city and had a great view from the rooftop terrace. We had a clear view of the nearby basilica, the surrounding colonial style buildings and the view point.

View from hostel

After breakfast we went with one of the guys in our dorm to the equator. We had lunch, then took a tour at the equator and learned about all the weird things that happen there. The water flows straight down on the line of the equator, you lose strength because the force of gravity is less and you lose balance on the line. There were a few other demonstrations and some information about the native tribes there. After the tour we headed back to our hostel, had a few drinks and went to the city center for the evening for more drinks and some food.

The next day we went to a local artisan market, then caught a bus to Banos. Quito was a beautiful city but after seeing so many colonial cities in Colombia I was starting to find them redundant.